TT: What are difficulties facing the commission in handling cases so far?
Hwang: We have been suffering from manpower shortages in handling a variety of unfair trade cases at the same time with around 200 staffers, especially in dealing with such significant, high profile cases as Microsoft's.
We are aware that it is a global trend to undertake government restructuring. However, fair trade cases actually increase as a country advances. Take Japan for example. Its fair trade authority has added more manpower whereas other agencies are reducing their staff numbers.
With multilevel marketing as our major focus in the next three years, we do hope for an increase in personnel and funds in order to set up a division exclusively responsible for this area.
TT: Taiwan became member of the Competition Committee under the Organization of Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2002. What does this mean to Taiwan? What kind of role does the commission play and what is its achievement in the OECD?
Hwang: This was indeed a breakthrough for Taiwan and an opportunity for us to be one of the architects of international competition standards.
By sharing our policy-making process and implementation experience during the annual meetings and helping provide funds for the OECD to hold global or Asian forums, we are building closer connections with the international community.
Given our reputation in this area, we are helping Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam by offering assistance in the enactment and enforcement of laws. Thailand, for example, also sent two of its officials here to observe and study how Taiwan carries out its fair trade regulations. The OECD also asked for our comments on China's competition bill which is currently being formulated.
TT: What are your plans for enhancing international cooperation?
Hwang: We are scheduling a visit to the EU in September to explore this likelihood. The US, Canada and Japan are also our targets for enhancing future trans-national collaboration. We may start from a single case and then move gradually to formal bilateral cooperation relations.
We expect to expand our trilateral agreement with Australia and New Zealand [signed in 2002] to a regional competition framework by including the US and Canada in the future. But that will take quite some time.
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