A New Zealand delegation visiting Taipei said that it expects more opportunities for trade cooperation with Taiwan, including partnerships to explore other markets.
The 30-member delegation is the first trade mission from New Zealand since the Agreement Between New Zealand and the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu on Economic Cooperation (ANZTEC) took effect in December last year.
“We are here to demonstrate that we take the relationship with Taiwan very seriously and to show that we are determined to develop it even further,” said Sir Ken Stevens, chairman of Export New Zealand and executive chairman of the Glidepath Group.
“As a result of the ANZTEC agreement and after our visit, I am very confident we will see many more New Zealanders visiting Taiwan and doing much more business with Taiwan,” Stevens said in a statement on Wednesday.
The initiatives are to include Taiwan and New Zealand businesses “forming partnerships to jointly explore other markets elsewhere,” he said.
“The fact is that though Taiwan is the eighth-largest market for our products by value, our smaller companies have tended to overlook the possibilities for building relationships here and deepening our business connections,” he added.
In the first five months after the ANZTEC took effect, New Zealand’s exports to Taiwan increased by more than 30 percent, while Taiwanese exports to New Zealand grew by more than 20 percent, Stevens said. In the first half of this year, Taiwan’s top eight exports to New Zealand saw double-digit growth, he said.
New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei Director Si’alei van Toor told luncheon attendees on Wednesday that Taiwan is a very important market for New Zealand.
It is New Zealand’s top export market for apples and cherries, as well as being a major market for dairy products, kiwifruit, beef, wood and other products, she said.
New Zealand Trade Development Centre in Taipei Director Dean Prebble said the delegation’s visit had been a success and that he expects bilateral trade links to grow.
The Importers and Exporters Association of Taiwan and Export New Zealand are expected to play critical roles in dveloping new relationships and strengthening existing ones, Prebble said.
“The key to strong trade growth is to understand what each party has to offer and gain trust in each other’s ability to deliver on promises,” he said. “We are off to a great start.”
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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