Several business leaders said yesterday that the government should sign a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with China as soon as possible to avoid the local economy from being marginalized.
Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) told a business breakfast meeting that tariffs were an important reason why the government should speed up the inking of such a pact with China.
Once the ASEAN Plus One comes into force next year, a free trade zone linking ASEAN and China will go into operation, which could drag down Taiwan’s textile industry — including his own Far Eastern Textile Corp (遠東紡織) — should the two sides fail to sign a CECA.
However, as many academics and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) still oppose a CECA for fear that Taiwan would become like “Hong Kong” or part of China, Hsu said the government should work harder to clarify the differences between a CECA and the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) signed between the territory and China.
“The opposition party should also carefully study what a CECA is, not politicize the issue,” Hsu said.
Morris Chang (張忠謀), chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that as the WTO’s Doha Round talks had collapsed, a regional trade agreement was needed in today’s environment.
“The problem lies in the name — CECA — but the content of the agreement should be beneficial to both sides [of the Taiwan Strait] as it is similar to an FTA [free trade agreement],” Chang said, adding that Taipei and Beijing should arrive at a name that both sides could accept.
Chang Ping-chao (張平沼), chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce (全國商業總會), said that Taiwan could lose its export competitiveness if a CECA were not signed, because it would be hard for the nation’s exporters to sell their products to Southeast Asia if its tariffs were higher.
“This agreement has to be signed, or else Taiwan’s economy will be marginalized,” Chang said.
Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), chairman of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會), which organized yesterday’s breakfast gathering, said the inking of CECA was one of the options.
“In terms of the FTA issue, the key is to not let Taiwan’s exports encounter barriers,” Huang said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS