The “early harvest” list of items for concessionary tariff treatment under the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) the government intends to sign with China will be made public at the end of this month, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday.
Wu said the pact was scheduled to be signed in the middle of next month when Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) meets his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) during the fifth round of cross-strait negotiations to be held in China.
The government has been widely criticized for holding back information on industries included on an early harvest list and market access to be granted to China since both sides of the Strait began negotiations on an ECFA in January, followed by a second round of talks in March.
Wu said that no written text on the “early harvest” had come out of the previous two rounds of negotiations. He said that economic officials from both sides would meet again in China this month for the third round of negotiations in preparation for a fourth round in Taipei scheduled for the end of this month.
Saying the planned fourth round would be “crucial to finalizing the early harvest list,” Wu said the list would be revealed to the public around that time.
If all the negotiations go well, the government hopes an ECFA will be signed early next month and then referred to the legislature for deliberation, Wu said.
In related news, the Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday approved a proposal for a referendum on the ECFA initiated by Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝).
The CEC determined that the number of admissible names on the initial petition, at 109,720, exceeded the 0.5 percent of eligible voters required by the Referendum Law (公民投票法).
The commission said that the referendum proposal would quickly be sent to the Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee, which would then have 30 days to report its findings back to the CEC for further action.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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