Taiwan yesterday signed an open skies agreement with Japan, lifting restrictions on the number of carriers allowed to offer scheduled passenger services between the two countries.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it hoped the deal would help spur tourism between Taiwan and Japan.
Under the agreement, restrictions on the number of carriers providing regular passenger services on profitable routes — currently two from each side — will be lifted.
Taiwanese air carriers will be allowed to offer unlimited flights to any Japanese destination except Tokyo.
The main airlines to be affected by the deal are China Airlines, EVA Airways, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways.
According to the Civil Aeronautics Administration, Japan is the third country to sign an open skies agreement with Taiwan, following the US and Singapore.
A total of 923,000 Japanese visited Taiwan in the nine months to September, an increase of nearly 50 percent over the previous year.
During the same period, the number of Taiwanese tourists traveling to Japan fell 21 percent to 845,000 in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Tourism Bureau said.
On Sept. 22, Taiwan and Japan signed an investment protection accord, a move that has helped ease investment barriers and offer greater investment protection.
Japan is Taiwan’s fifth-largest trading partner and bilateral trade totaled US$70 billion last year. Taiwan exported US$12.23 billion in goods to Japan from January to August, up 3.5 percent from the same period last year, government data showed.
Additional reporting by staff writer
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS