Taipei Port has witnessed strong growth in both imports and exports of automobiles, with the total reaching about 80,000 last year, the Keelung Harbor Bureau said yesterday.
Teng Shih-chang (鄧世昌), chief secretary of the Keelung Harbor Bureau, said 45,000 were vehicles imported from abroad, accounting for 65 percent of the total imported to the nation. The rest were vehicles for export, accounting for 90 percent of the nation’s car exports.
Statistics from Taipei Port also showed that traffic through the port had increased 94 percent compared with 2009.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Port
“This is a clear indication of economic rebound,” Teng said. “It also showed that an automobile industry cluster has gradually emerged at Taipei Port.”
The bureau further credited growth in the automobile industry at Taipei Port to Tonglit Logistics, which was the first company to establish an operational base in the port’s free-trade zone.
The company specializes in the import and export of whole vehicles, as well as auto parts.
Through the service provided by Tonglit, major global vehicle manufacturers, including HINO, Toyota and Ford, could assemble the vehicles at the port’s free-trade zone and export them again to Australia, Japan or the Middle East, the bureau said.
The bureau said Tonglit had decided to set up a base at Taipei Port because it is only 122 nautical miles from the Fuzhou Free Trade Port Zone in China. With supply chains from both China and Taiwan, the company aims to make Taipei Port its port installation options unit for automobiles in the Asia-Pacific region, the bureau said.
The bureau estimated imports and exports of automobiles could reach 100,000 this year, because demand would remain high.
Located in Bali District (八里) in New Taipei City (新北市), the port officially opened in 2009. The container terminal is used by Evergreen Marine, Yang Ming Marine Transport and Wang Hai Lines, which signed a 50-year build--operate-transfer contract with the government.
Meanwhile, similar growth in the automobile sector was also reported at Taichung Port.
Taichung Port Harbor master Wang Ko-chin (王克勤) said that a total of 18,570 motor vehicles were imported through the port last year, nearly twice the number recorded in 2009.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods