Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Francis Liang (梁國新) yesterday said that the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed last week would be reported to the WTO as per the world trade body’s regulations.
Liang’s remarks came in the wake of WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy’s comments in a recent interview that regional trade agreements must be reported to the WTO according to WTO regulations and standards.
However, Liang said the WTO did not have specific regulations on whether the ECFA should be reported to it under the name Taiwan, used when it joined the WTO, or under the name of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), adding that the government would handle the matter in an appropriate manner.
Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002 under the name of “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu.”
Lamy did not answer a question on whether Taiwan and China would be required to open up 90 percent of their markets to each other within 10 years of signing the ECFA.
Economic officials said that the WTO has no fixed rules on how member states should report free-trade agreements or regional trade agreements signed with other nations and that there is considerable flexibility as to how the ECFA could be reported to the WTO.
The ECFA document is only in Chinese and will have to be translated into English before it is submitted to the WTO.
The officials said that objections from third-party member states about the ECFA would likely come through the WTO’s Committee on Regional Trade Agreements. However, they said this was unlikely to be a problem, as no such complaints had ever been made by a member state.
Meanwhile, Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) yesterday accused Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of “distorting” remarks by Lamy to meet her own political agenda during her debate on the ECFA negotiations with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in April.
During the debate, Tsai said that Lamy, as a person who strongly supports free trade, publicly pointed out in a speech on April 15 that trade openings were no panacea and that only with complementary policies could the benefits of more open trade be truly realized.
Tsai also quoted Lamy as saying that individual governments were responsible for dealing with the distribution of interests triggered by the opening up of trade.
Tsai said that if such interests were controlled by a minority of rich and powerful people, the free trade would lose its legitimacy.
The DPP yesterday insisted that Tsai’s comments perfectly represented what Lamy had said.
“Tsai’s remarks during the debate were taken from Lamy,” DPP spokesperson Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said, adding that the Presidential Office should focus on running the country and not gratuitous attacks on the opposition party.
The spokesperson added that the government still did not understand some of the main concerns raised by the DPP.
“If the government does not want us to offer a second opinion on its policies, it might as well implement martial law and then nobody will oppose their comments,” he said.
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