The legislature yesterday ratified the Agreement between Singapore and the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu on Economic Partnership (ASTEP).
The agreement is to take effect 30 days after Taiwan and Singapore notify the each other of the completion of domestic legal procedures necessitated by the agreement.
The government still needs to pass related amendments to the Customs Import Tariff Act (海關進口稅則) and Shipping Act (航業法) before it can make the required revisions to domestic laws to implement the ASTEP, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said.
Wang said the legislature will prioritize the review of related amendments once the bills have been sent to the legislature by the Executive Yuan.
The pact is expected to take effect in February or March next year as the legislative session is scheduled to end on Jan. 14.
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Bill Cho (卓士昭) yesterday said the agreement is expected to increase domestic production value by NT$40 billion (US$1.3 billion) and create 6,000 jobs.
Executive Yuan spokesperson Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said the agreement is an important milestone and called on the legislature to work with the government to hasten the passage of related amendments to boost efforts to sign more trade pacts to avoid marginalization in the international community.
Under the agreement, Singapore is to remove all tariffs on goods from Taiwan, including on six types of alcoholic beverages not covered by Singapore’s tariff reduction commitments under the WTO.
Taiwan is to eliminate tariffs on 83 percent of Singaporean imports and gradually make 99.48 percent of products from the city-state tariff-free, officials said.
Taiwan is to maintain import tariffs on 40 agricultural products, including rice, garlic, dried mushrooms, red beans, pineapples, mangoes, coconuts and unshelled peanuts.
Additional reporting by CNA
OVERHAUL NEEDED: The government should improve its agricultural processing capabilities and expand to new markets to limit its reliance on China, an expert said China’s ban on Taiwanese pineapples was “unsurprising,” and Taiwan should have years ago altered its produce export strategies and target customers, experts said. China on Friday abruptly suspended imports of pineapples from Taiwan, saying that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful biological entities” on the fruit. Calling it an “unfriendly” move, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said that 99.79 percent of the pineapples sent to China since last year have met China’s import standards. Chiao Chun (焦鈞), the author of Fruits and Politics — A Recollection of Cross-strait Agricultural Interaction Over the Past Decade (水果政治學：兩岸農業交流十年回顧與展望), said that China’s announcement is clearly targeting
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
DECADES OF INFLUENCE: Over the past 20 years, China has made inroads with Aborigines, funding political campaigns and trips, a legislator said Lawmakers have called on the National Security Bureau to investigate claims of pervasive Chinese influence among Aboriginal communities. Legislators pointed to a surge in communist propaganda and Chinese-funded projects over the past few years, which they say are aimed at infiltrating and buying political influence among Aboriginal communities. “China has for decades carried out wide-ranging ‘united front’ tactics and propaganda campaigns targeting Aborigines,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩), a member of the Puyuma community in Taitung County. “Now, they are influencing elections for local councilors and village chiefs, offering money for candidates to mount their campaigns, and to
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center
RSS