The Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) in Taipei yesterday urged the government to speed up further trade talks with Beijing and Tokyo to bring down tariffs on more goods exported to those countries.
Taiwan-based Japanese firms hold high expectations that the number of customs-deductible goods and services listed in the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which Taiwan signed with China, would increase if talks were extended, JCCI senior director Kyota Kishimoto said during a press conference to unveil the business group’s annual white paper.
“The ECFA has helped to boost cross-strait trade opportunities and build a mutually beneficial relationship between companies in China and Taiwan. It also benefits Taiwan-based Japanese firms exporting goods and services to China at lower customs rate,” Kishimoto said.
A Taiwan-Japan free-trade agreement (FTA) would add more than 500 items to the list of tariff deductible goods, based on the newly released white paper.
“We look forward to further trade agreements between Taiwan and China on goods and services that are not listed in the ECFA. They would attract more Japanese businesses to invest in Taiwan, strengthening economic ties between the two countries,” Kishimoto said.
If Taiwan inks more FTAs with other regional economies, it would enhance the country’s attractiveness, he added.
“We hold a positive attitude toward the Taiwanese government’s determination that Taiwan will join the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] in eight years and believe the TPP agreement will help foster economic ties between Taiwan and other regional economies,” Kishimoto said.
“Though Taiwan and Japan signed an investment protection accord in September, we encourage the Taiwanese government to initiate more dialogue with the Japanese government on a Taiwan-Japan FTA to avoid trade barriers and protect investment activities in the two economies,” he said.
Council for Economic Planning and Development Deputy Minister Wu Ming-chi (吳明機) said yesterday the Taiwanese and Japanese governments would continue to look for ways to ink a bilateral free-trade pact.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day