Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) said in Lima on Thursday that the Ministry of Economic Affairs would allocate NT$5 billion (US$151.5 million) to help bolster Taiwan’s export trade.
Yiin, who is in Lima attending the ministerial meeting of the 2008 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum that was to finish yesterday, said economic or finance ministers of the APEC member countries had noticed the imperative of trade finance services or solutions to help facilitate export trade amid the global economic downturn.
Ministers of many APEC countries have said their countries’ exports have been dragged down by the recent financial meltdown, Yiin said.
Taiwan has not fared any better and its export trade has also been battered, Yiin said, adding that the ministry would offer the NT$5 billion as loans to foreign buyers to help them increase their imports from Taiwan.
Huang Chih-peng, (黃志鵬) the director-general of the Bureau of Foreign Trade, said the ministry would first allocate the funds to the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China(輸出入銀行), from which foreign banks will get the money as loans. The foreign banks will distribute the money in loans to foreign buyers.
“These loans will have to be used to finance the borrowers’ purchases from Taiwan,” Huang said in Lima.
“The Bureau of Foreign Trade will also ask that the majority of the loans go to importers from newly emerging markets or importers of machinery or other designated products from Taiwan,” Huang said.
The trade finance program will be part of a giant economic stimulus project worth nearly NT$500 billion that the government has planned to reinvigorate the slumping domestic economy, Yiin said.
The project, which still requires approval by the legislature before it can be implemented, is expected to raise GDP by 1.64 percentage points next year.
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