Taiwan needs to go the extra mile to enhance its competitiveness to avoid lagging behind its competitors in the region, a US economic official in Taiwan said yesterday.
To do so, the nation must do more to open up government procurement contracts, protect intellectual property rights (IPR) and relax travel restrictions, said William Weinstein, an economic chief at the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto US embassy.
Weinstein -- who is coming to the end of his four-year tenure here and is being sent to Israel -- said that Taiwan needed to fulfill its market access commitments under the WTO framework.
Taiwan joined the global trade body in January 2002.
In a farewell speech at a monthly luncheon held by the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, Weinstein said he hoped Taiwan -- where foreign companies suffered losses of US$452.7 million last year due to copyright piracy -- would further amend the Copyright Law (
attracting international talent
User-friendly and non-discriminatory visa rules would also help Taiwan become a location of choice for the regional operations of global corporations, he said.
Unless the nation can be more open to attract more international skilled talent and facilitate technology transfer, "Taiwan would have a very difficult time in keeping up with its competitors," he said.
Government procurement remained a problematic issue for foreign companies, Weinstein said, and the nation should do more to abide by the rules of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA).
"Taiwan's competitors are moving faster in liberalizing their markets, working on IPR, GPA, and open-up of travel restrictions ... so their economies could grow in the service sector," Weinstein said.
Looking ahead, the US official said he was still bullish about Taiwan's economic future, mainly because the new economic team led by the Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yue (
free-trade
agreement
On a US-Taiwan free-trade agreement (FTA), which Ho regards as one of the major tasks of her tenure, Weinstein said that no FTA talks were currently underway and the US government had not agreed to begin such discussions.
"We are certainly open to the possibility of considering an FTA in the future," Weinstein said.
"For the moment, the most productive course for US-Taiwan economic relations is for Taiwan to follow through in addressing the existing items on the table, such as IPR, pharmaceuticals, telecommunication liberalization and agriculture trade," he said.
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-most competitive country in Asia this year, behind Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong, according to World Competitiveness Book, issued by the Lausanne-based International Institute for Man-agement Development (IMD) last month.
Taiwan's global competitiveness jumped to 12th in the world, up from 17th last year, among the 60 major countries surveyed, and its government efficiency ranking moved to the world's 18th place from 20th last year, the IMD report said.
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