An executive committee was established in Taipei yesterday to oversee the execution of a Taiwan-Guatemala free trade agreement (FTA) that took effect on July 1.
Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (
Chen said the committee will be charged with handling matters related to the FTA, including addressing bilateral trade disputes.
At its meeting yesterday the committee passed unified "country of origin" certification forms and enforcement rules for resolving trade disputes under the FTA.
The agreement is the second such accord Taiwan has signed following a similar earlier pact with Panama. It is also Guatemala's first FTA with an Asian country.
Describing the two countries' economies as complementary to each other, Chen said the free trade pact will spawn new business opportunities for both sides, with Guatemalan farm produce finding new markets in Taiwan while Taiwan's industrial goods will enter Guatemala on better terms.
Under the FTA, Chen said, Taiwan has agreed to offer an annual 60,000 tonne quota for Guatemalan sugar, which, besides benefiting Guatemalan farmers, is expected to help stabilize domestic sugar prices.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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