Taiwan and China are unlikely to complete the latest round of negotiations over the cross-strait trade in goods agreement today, as the two sides still have differences on major trade issues.
“We hope to achieve a major breakthrough in the last day of this round of negotiations,” Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) Director-General Yang Jen-ni (楊珍妮), who led Taiwan’s negotiation team, told a teleconference yesterday after finishing the second day of the 12th round of talks.
The latest round of talks started on Saturday and is scheduled to end this evening at the Grand Hotel (圓山飯店) in Taipei.
Yang declined to confirm if Taipei and Beijing could wrap up the negotiations today.
However, as the two sides agreed on only four of the nine chapters of the agreement as of the second day of negotiations, it is unlikely that they would go through the remaining five chapters and three appendices today.
Yesterday’s negotiations tackled the scale of tax reductions and special rules of origin, but BOFT Deputy Director-General David Hsu (徐大衛) said the scale of tariff reduction remains the largest subject of disagreement between Taiwan and China.
Hsu said today’s negotiations are to primarily focus on the issue of tariff reduction rates.
Taiwan hopes to gain better tariff reduction rates for the automobile, flat panel, machine tools and petrochemicals industries.
“The talks are reaching the final stage. We have seen tax reduction, special rules of origin, trade remedies intertwine with each other, and we are still doing our best to strive for better terms,” Hsu said.
During the first and the second day of this round of negotiations, Taiwan and China have agreed on technical barrier of trade, custom clearance procedures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) and country of origin chapters.
The two sides also agreed to accelerate the custom clearance procedures for Taiwanese goods entering China, Yang said.
To shorten the procedures, Taipei and Beijing are to establish a computerized information exchange system that can be used to approve an import permit within 48 hours after receiving a clearance application, she said.
However, if either side required a longer time of inspection for specific goods, such as food products, then the 48-hour fast clearance treatment would be inapplicable, she said.
“The government would not lower its standards for food safety inspections,” Yang said.
Beijing said that if Taiwanese companies could not present an accurate tax identification number for the time being, they could apply for a preliminary custom inspection to reduce the possibility of goods being held at customs, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
If either side considers that SPS measures create a trade barrier, a meeting would take place within a short period of time to solve the issue, the ministry said.
If differences over certain issues cannot be solved during this round of negotiations, the ministry expects to continue the talks before the end of this year.
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