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MOFA to close five offices abroad

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is scheduled to close five representative offices abroad, Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) said yesterday.

Ou told the Central News Agency that the government would close five of its 121 representative offices to better utilize resources.

The offices — one each in Bolivia, Venezuela and Bangladesh, and the ministry’s Colom office in Panama and Johannesburg office in South Africa — are being closed because their light work load makes them unnecessary, Ou said.

At the same time, representative offices in Sapporo, Japan, and Istanbul, Turkey, are scheduled to open this summer.

Peter Tsai (蔡明耀), secretary-general of the Association of East Asian Affairs, said earlier this week that the Sapporo Office should open late next month or early in August.

Ou said one reason the Bangladesh office was closing was that the office had not been able to achieve its full potential because of limitations imposed by the host country.

The office was banned by Dhaka from issuing visas to Taiwan and was not allowed to fly the Republic of China flag.

The Johannesburg and Colom offices are being closed because the government has other offices in those countries, he said, including an embassy in Panama.

Ou said the closure of the offices did not indicate that Taiwan did not value these countries, nor was it connected to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “diplomatic truce” with Beijing, but rather a reflection of the government’s efforts to improve efficiency.
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