Business leaders and airlines gave a general thumbs-up to the opening of indirect charter cargo flights to China that are scheduled to begin on Sept. 25, but they expressed the hope that liberalization extends to direct cargo flights soon.
"This is a good start to normalizing traffic between Taiwan and China," Day Sheng-tung (戴勝通), chairman of the National Association of Small & Medium Enterprises (中小企業協會), said yesterday.
"I believe cross-strait shipments will soon follow this pattern," he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council announced Wednesday that the government will allow domestic air carriers to transport goods between Taiwan and Shanghai via Hong Kong or Macau without changing planes, as is currently the case. According to the council's evaluation report, the measure will cut shipping costs by between US$50,000 and US$80,000 per trip.
The council estimates that transport time, now between 12 and 16 hours per trip, will fall to five hours.
"Time is a key factor in terms of business competitiveness, especially as economic ties between the two sides have been getting closer in recent years," Day said.
For the first seven months of the year, Taiwanese investment in China amounted to US$5.64 billion, an increase of 154.63 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. It is estimated that in Shanghai alone, the number of Taiwanese businesspeople exceeds 500,000, although there are no official statistics.
Rock Hsu (許勝雄), chairman of Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei (台北市進出口公會), also said the new cargo policy is a major step forward for cross-strait traffic, but urged direct transportation links to be opened as soon as possible.
While Taiwanese businesspeople in Shanghai are delighted about the measure, owners of traditional businesses dealing in things such as foodstuffs, which are concentrated in the southeast coastal provinces of China, said the links will not help them at all, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.
The report quoted anonymous China-based Taiwanese food industrialists as saying they could not afford to transport their cheaper but bulkier goods by air freight.
"Cross-strait indirect charter cargo flights can obviously bring benefits to the high-tech industry in Shanghai," the report said. "We hope the government comes up with further cross-strait shipment measures for other major cities in China."
The nation's two main cargo flight operators, China Airlines Co (
"We welcome this measure and believe we can easily handle the business," China Airlines spokesman Roger Han (韓梁中) said yesterday.
China Airlines has a fleet of 14 air freighters, each of which can carry 120 tonnes of goods.
"Although the council has given a green light for us to operate charter cargo, we hope the Chinese authorities approve this plan as well before we can start drawing up a new network of cargo services," Han said.
EVA Airways, which has 13 cargo planes, also said it was ready to undertake the assignment.
"We'll apply for the business once the rules are released," said Nieh Kuo-wei (
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