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Ma vows to continue opening market

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday vowed to continue to open Taiwan's market in the hope of creating a freer environment for investment.

Ma blamed the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government for adopting a conservative economic policy and discouraging Taiwanese businesses from listing their companies here.

Ma said that as the 400-year history of Taiwan showed that opening up the local market fosters prosperity and closing leads to decay, his administration had made aggressive efforts to open up the local market since he took office in May.

“If we don’t do it now, I’m afraid it will be too late,” he told the annual meeting of the Asia Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce in Taipei yesterday morning. “When the global economy becomes better, we will be ready and our economy will rise up with the wind.”

The currency policy was insufficient to tackle “import inflation,” Ma said, adding that only effective financial and economic policies could revive the economy.

Two examples were the weekend charter flights and the increase of Chinese tourists to Taiwan, he said. While they were expected to help boost the economy, Ma said, the effect would be limited if there were no other supplementary measures to go with them.

Ma said the former administration set many financial restrictions on Taiwanese businesspeople, including the 40 percent ceiling of China-bound investment. Because of the restrictions, the country lost massive amounts of capital over the past eight years under the DPP administration, he said, estimated at over NT$4.5 trillion (US$148 billion). Ma’s administration last week announced plans to ease the cap and scrap it altogether for companies that are headquartered in Taiwan.

Ma said restrictive investment policies were adverse to Taiwan and ineffective to China. With the deterioration of the investment environment in China, Ma said Taiwan must provide a freer and more open investment market, adding that the matter has been high on his administration’s agenda. Using Ireland as an example, Ma said The Economist magazine described Ireland as a country that was “poor among the rich” about a decade ago, but now it has become “the Shining Ireland.” Its adherence to “flexibility, agility and pragmatism” has helped the country transform itself and return to the global arena, Ma said, proving that opening up, practicality and deregulation were key to economic success.

His administration was also committed to the “I-Taiwan 12 infrastructure project,” Ma said, and planned to infuse NT$4 trillion into the project, with two-thirds coming from the government and the remaining third from the private sector.
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