The two largest international business organizations focused on Taiwan have agreed in principle to host a major energy conference in Taipei later this year, it was announced yesterday in Washington.
"In light of the increasing concerns expressed by international businesses operating in Taiwan -- including the critical IT sector -- AmCham Taipei and the US-Taiwan Business Council plan to hold a major energy-focused conference in Taipei, tentatively scheduled for late September this year," said Richard Henson, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham).
"We are also concerned that many of the world's top energy firms are turning away from the Taiwan market at the same time that serious infrastructure shortcomings are clearly evident," Henson said.
The statement came following a second meeting between Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the Washington-based US-Taiwan Business Council, and an 11-member AmCham business delegation that is in Washington this week on the chamber's annual "door knock" trip.
The meetings were set up to discuss priority issues presented in AmCham's 2002 Taiwan White Paper and the 2002 Business Confidence Survey, published last week.
"We expect the energy conference to bring together senior energy officials from the US government with Taiwan government officials and business leaders from the world's leading energy sector corporations," Hammond-Chambers said.
"During our meetings with the business council, we discussed the growing concern among business-people with Taiwan's non-competitive energy sector," Henson added.
"We decided that a primary goal of this conference will be to assess how Taiwan can best open its market to international competition in the energy and related sectors, including construction and environmental protection," he said.
Major concerns about the quality and reliability of Taiwan's power generation and transmission infrastructure have been on the group's agenda for more than a decade, Henson said.
"Continuing problems in this sector reinforce AmCham's disappointment with the slow pace of privatization of Taipower and the Chinese Petroleum Corporations," he said.
The 2002 Taiwan White Paper calls on the Taiwan government to privatize both state-owned energy companies and end their continuing dominant monopoly positions in the local energy market.
The White Paper also urges liberalization of the electricity, petroleum, and natural gas industries, urging that "necessary laws and regulations be revised to allow fair competition by international companies."
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