MOF puts cross-strait agreement on the table

Taiwan is seeking to negotiate with China an agreement on supervising financial activities across the Taiwan Strait against a backdrop of ever increasing economic ties between the two political rivals, it was reported yesterday.

The Ministry of Finance hopes to talk with its Chinese counterpart through the platforms offered by the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the WTO, of which both Taiwan and China are members, a Chinese-language newspaper said.

The report said such an agreement has become necessary as cross-strait financial ties increase, with Taiwan hoping that using APEC and the WTO will allow the two sides to get around the obvious political obstacles that separate them.

No finance ministry officials were immediately available to comment.

The news came out after Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), chairwoman of the Mainland Affairs Council, said last month that the government is mulling ways to relax restrictions on cross-strait financial and banking exchanges, facilitating direct fund transactions through China-based off-shore banking units.

But the planned normalization of cross-strait financial transaction would be workable only if Taiwan has obtained fiscal jurisdiction over Taiwanese companies based in China, said Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), presidential adviser and president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.