The government faces competition from South Korea when helping local businesses secure infrastructure contracts in Southeast Asian nations as it pushes the New Southbound Policy, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday.
The source, who requested anonymity, said that South Korea has been “ambitiously” preparing plans to win infrastructure construction bids in Southeast Asia for a long time.
Nonetheless, the government has managed to help Taiwanese enterprises land opportunities in Vietnam, the source said, adding that would to soon initiate talks for local corporations to undertake infrastructure construction projects.
India and Myanmar also have plenty of opportunities for Taiwanese companies to build public works, the source said.
Indonesia, which comprises more than 170,000 islands, is seeking to upgrade its shipbuilding industry and has expressed its willingness to collaborate with Taiwanese shipbuilders, the source said.
Meanwhile, Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中), who oversees implementation of the southbound policy, said that even though the nation faces competition from China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, the New Southbound Policy would proceed as intended.
“They do their thing and we will do ours,” Deng said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Thursday during a meeting about the nation’s foreign economy and trade policies said that her administration would create a strategic financing mechanism for the southbound initiative, for which it would initially earmark US$3.5 billion.
The mechanism is to be used to expand collaboration with the nation’s diplomatic allies and help local businesses when bidding for infrastructure projects overseas, Tsai said.
The financing quota set by Tsai could be increased if the need arises, Deng said.
Local enterprises mainly look for opportunities to build harbors, roads and bridges, but other public works could also be profitable, he said.
He cited as an example CTCI Corp’s foray into power plant construction in the region, which he said has gone well.
However, CTCI landed those deals on its own, while the government aims to help local businesses land deals by opening up frontiers for them, Deng said.
A high-ranking official said that public works construction has an estimated market value of NT$8 trillion (US$265.3 billion), and that it would be impossible for Taiwanese firms to monopolize that sum.
Taiwanese businesses can only take a share of the profit and the government is determined to provide them with the necessary funds to do so, the official said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS