China supports efforts to speedily conclude ongoing negotiations with Taiwan over a trade in goods agreement, but is concerned about uncertainties created by the nation’s legislature, Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍) said on Saturday.
Duh said Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng (高虎城) promised to speed up trade talks with Taiwan during an hour-long meeting on the sidelines of the APEC ministerial meeting in Beijing.
However, Gao also expressed concerns about the uncertainties surrounding a draft act on supervision of agreements negotiated and signed across the Taiwan Strait, which has been stalled in the Legislative Yuan since April, Duh added.
Taiwan signed the cross-strait service trade pact with China in June last year, subsequent to the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
With growing public demand for more transparency in cross-strait agreements, the legislature has decided to review the draft act to address the issue before ratifying the service trade pact.
Duh said he responded by suggesting that the two sides should first work on technical issues in their ongoing talks on the trade in goods agreement.
Meanwhile, officials in Taipei said the Ministry of Economic Affairs is ready to return to the table for trade talks with China, even though the stalled legislative process is putting pressure on negotiators.
Taiwan and China held their ninth round of talks over the trade pact in September, and Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Wu Ming-ji (吳明機) said the two sides have agreed to lower import tariffs in five phases.
Taiwan is seeking to include its more competitive flat panel, machine tools, auto and petrochemical sectors in the first phase, he added.
Bureau of Foreign Trade Deputy Director-General David Hsu (徐大衛) said in Taipei that China has slowed down its pace of talks over the goods trade agreement, since the service trade pact has failed to clear the legislature.
Hsu and Wu hope to conclude the goods trade agreement negotiations with China less than six months after China and South Korea wrap up their ongoing free-trade deal talks, but said that the key factor remains the stalled draft act on oversight of cross-strait agreements.
The stalled legislative review of the draft act weighs heavily on trade talk negotiators, because they fear they might again face accusations of “selling out the nation,” through under-the-table deals, as negotiators did in the service trade talks, Wu said.
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