Taiwan should adopt a balanced development strategy and avoid overly relying on a single market to drive its export-oriented economy on the world stage, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei said yesterday.
“Taiwan should pursue greater balance by consolidating its economic connections with such other major markets as Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and especially the United States, the world’s biggest economy,” AmCham chairman Bill Wiseman told a media briefing on the release of the organization’s annual white paper.
Wiseman’s warning came a few hours before the release of Taiwan’s latest trade data, which showed China accounting for 40.2 percent of exports last month, while the US took only 12.3 percent.
“Over-reliance on one market is always risky,” Wiseman said. “Taiwan should not turn away growth when it can get it, but it needs to lock in the future. It needs to go and start broadening its economic relationships beyond focusing so much on China.”
Taiwan is almost doubly dependent on China, which drove 47 percent of the country’s economic growth last year, sharply higher than the 25 percent average with the G20 nations, he said.
With South Korea about to enter into free-trade agreements with the US and the EU, Taiwan should step up its efforts to avoid losing its competitive edge to its main trade rival, Wiseman said.
The paper, however, recognized the value of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement that Taiwan and China signed in June last year and it encouraged the Taiwanese government to deepen cross-strait cooperation in sectors such as finance, chemicals, real estate, retail, telecoms, transport and medical devices.
AmCham, the largest foreign trade group in Taiwan, with more than 900 members representing about 500 companies, will take its latest position paper to Washington next month when its members meet with US lawmakers.
The organization suggested that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — both of whom are running for the presidency next year — use the paper as a reference when formulating policies to assure Taiwan’s long-term economic gains.
Taiwan continues to face difficult challenges for its future economic development, despite its improvement in rankings in global competitiveness surveys, AmCham said.
The paper called for enhanced government efficiency, transparency and consistency — including greater attention to long-range planning instead of mainly reacting to short-term challenges.
The organization found that of the 114 issues and sub-issues raised last year, only 14, or 12.3 percent, were resolved or showed satisfactory progress — the lowest in its history of tracking issues seven years ago.
The chamber also encouraged Washington to pay increased attention to strengthening economic ties with Taiwan as the country is its ninth-largest trading partner.
“If the current dispute over beef prevents the holding of trade talks, other channels should be found to work on the important trade issues between the two sides,” Wiseman said.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS