Salvadoran President Antonio Saca yesterday touted his country's investment climate and wooed Taiwanese businesses to invest in the Central American country.
El Salvador -- with a strategically important location and open investment policies, as well as a diligent and well-educated workforce -- is a good choice for Taiwanese investors who are interested in expanding their business operations throughout the Americas, Saca said.
Addressing a breakfast workshop hosted by the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association (CIECA), Saca gave the thumbs up to his country in general and the Salvadoran people in particular, saying that Salvadorans are hard-working, disciplined and well-educated people whose general productivity and level of democratization are among the highest in Central and South America.
With its strategically important location, El Salvador also is a WTO member with stable politics as well as sound infrastructure development and laws, Saca said.
Having adopted open investment policies, El Salvador, together with five other Central American countries, signed a Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the US this year, which is expected to formally take effect next year, Saca noted.
Beefed up by the agreement, El Salvador is a "good choice" for those who intend to use Central America as a gateway to the huge and potentially lucrative American markets, he added.
Some 100 Taiwanese business leaders and executives attended the workshop, which was presided over by CIECA chairman Jeffrey Koo (
Saca arrived in Taipei on Tuesday for a six-day official visit with a 27-member entourage, whose members include Interior Minister Rene Figueroa, Agriculture and Husbandry Minister Mario Salaveria and Environment and Natural Resources Minister Hugo Cesar Barrera.
This is Saca's first visit to Taiwan since he assumed the presidency in June.
He is scheduled to deliver a speech today at the 2004 Democratic Pacific Assembly in Taipei, which is chaired by Vice President Annette Lu (
According to CIECA statistics, Taiwan exported US$74.57 million worth of products and services to El Salvador last year and imported US$2.32 million worth of goods and services from that country.
Most of the Taiwanese investors in El Salvador have backed textile and garment manufacturing businesses, although in recent years the country's electronics, computer and automobile industries have mushroomed, becoming a greater draw for Taiwanese investors.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not