The UK seeks to discuss with the Taiwanese government the lifting of Taiwan's restrictions on government procurement and imports from China when the British trade minister visits Taipei next month, British Trade and Cultural Office Director Michael Reilly said on Thursday.
He said British Minister of State for Trade and Investment Lord Digby Jones would visit Taiwan next month to promote two-way trade and investment between the UK and Taiwan and to have discussions with local authorities in hopes that those restrictions can be lifted.
"Taiwan is quite an open market but there are a number of restrictions on trade that mean it's not as attractive a market as it could be," said Reilly, referring to regulations that basically restrict government procurement to Taiwanese firms.
Reilly said such a restriction is "very discriminatory."
Taiwan, which became member of the WTO in 2002, failed to join the Government Procurement Agreement under the WTO because of opposition from China.
Even if a foreign company sets up a branch office in Taiwan, employs Taiwanese people and pays tax in Taiwan, Reilly said, it is still not permitted to bid for government projects. In the UK, a Taiwanese company that sets up offices in the UK is allowed to bid for UK government contracts on the same basis as a UK company.
"We would like to see a bit of reciprocity in this area," he said, adding that "we would like to see UK companies that are registered in Taiwan treated on the same basis as Taiwanese companies."
Another issue of concern to many foreign companies is the ban on a wide range of imports from China, Reilly said, adding that all this does is lead to higher prices for Taiwanese consumers.
"Taiwanese are the biggest employers in mainland China rather than UK companies. So these restrictions actually make Taiwan lose out," he said, adding that "it does not affect the mainland. It does mean that Taiwan's economy suffers."
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS