The Ministry of Economic Affairs is asking the country’s businesses to wait patiently for Taiwan to sign economic cooperation pacts with Southeast Asian countries because Singapore and China are the trade negotiation priorities at present.
In a meeting with Taiwanese businesses operating in the Philippines on Saturday, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said trade talks generally take time and that the current priority is to negotiate a free-trade-like deal with Singapore.
Citing Taiwan’s Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China as an example, Shih said the early harvest program covered only 539 products, but took one year and 100 people to work out before the pact was signed in June last year.
There are more than 8,000 items being discussed in follow-up negotiations with China, and substantive talks are also being held with Singapore, making it hard to give the necessary attention to members of ASEAN, Shih said.
“The government is devoting its greatest efforts to these two areas, and we have to wait until these talks have reached a certain stage before focusing on other countries,” Shih said.
The minister said, however, that the ASEAN was an area with which Taiwan needed to forge a free-trade or economic cooperation agreement.
The economic bloc, which comprises more than 500 million people, is now Taiwan’s second-largest export market. It buys 16 percent of all of the country’s exports, second only to China’s 41 percent, Shih said.
Shih arrived in Manila on Friday for the 17th Taiwan-Philippine economic cooperation meeting.
He attended a ministerial-level session of the meeting soon after his arrival.
On Thursday, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Francis Liang (梁國新) and his Philippine counterpart jointly hosted the vice ministerial-level session.
Shih said the two countries reached agreements on many issues, including that the Philippines would give Taiwanese businesses operating in its Subic and Clark special economic zones duty-free status and set up a single window to deal with visa issues.
In addition, the two countries signed letters of intent to pursue cooperation — one on the development of electric-powered -vehicles and the other for cross-border -exchanges of electronic certificates of origin.
Shih flew home after concluding the two-day meeting on Saturday.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
PRECEDENTED TIMES: In news that surely does not shock, AI and tech exports drove a banner for exports last year as Taiwan’s economic growth experienced a flood tide Taiwan’s exports delivered a blockbuster finish to last year with last month’s shipments rising at the second-highest pace on record as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and advanced computing remained strong, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Exports surged 43.4 percent from a year earlier to US$62.48 billion last month, extending growth to 26 consecutive months. Imports climbed 14.9 percent to US$43.04 billion, the second-highest monthly level historically, resulting in a trade surplus of US$19.43 billion — more than double that of the year before. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) described the performance as “surprisingly outstanding,” forecasting export growth
RSS