Taiwan is resolved to win the endorsement of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) member states to join the second round of negotiations and gain access to the free-trade agreement, a Cabinet spokesman said yesterday.
Taiwan welcomes the TPP, which is to create the biggest trade bloc in the Pan-Pacific region among 12 countries, Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said, citing Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) after Monday’s conclusion of TPP negotiations in Atlanta, Georgia, to lower trade barriers and enhance investment protection.
Sun said that since last year, the Executive Yuan has called nine special task force meetings to devise complementary measures and revise local laws and regulations in line with international norms, in an effort to show Taiwan’s resolve to join the TPP.
It is imperative that Taiwan, an export-oriented nation, gains access to the TPP, Sun said.
Taiwan’s participation in the trade pact would be tantamount to several economic cooperation agreements, securing an opportunity for fair competition and creating broader foreign trade horizons for the nation, he added.
When the TPP takes effect, its economic scale is expected to be about US$28 trillion, accounting for 36 percent of the world’s overall production value, according to the Executive Yuan.
It said the 12 TPP member states — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam — are all important trade partners.
Taiwan’s shipments to the 12 countries last year totaled US$103 billion, making up one-third of its overall exports, the Executive Yuan said.
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,
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
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) yesterday said that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) “should not follow the Democratic Progressive Party’s [DPP] direction,” after KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) had said that China posed a threat to Taiwan. Chiang was quoted by Reuters as saying during an interview that China’s “one country, two systems” formula for an unification with Taiwan “has no market” in the nation. Chiang also described China as the major threat to Taiwan, Reuters reported. Jaw, who has expressed interest in running for KMT chairman this year and in the 2024 presidential election, wrote on Facebook that
RSS