Taiwan and China may sign a bilateral financial supervision memorandum of understanding (MOU) in October, which would allow Taiwanese securities firms to set up branch offices in China, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday.
Taiwan Securities Association (證券業公會), however, took a low-key stance on the issue yesterday, saying a seminar to be held in China in October would not touch upon any discussions over the bilateral pact.
"We will mainly exchange our viewpoints in the seminar about risk management amid markets opening up," the association's acting secretary general Yu Ching-fang (
"The MOU issue is not included in our agenda. But we do welcome the signing of any such bilateral agreements, if possible, as the industry has been longing for it for years," he said.
The association has in the past few years constantly requested the government's authorization -- as regulated in the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) -- to negotiate with its Chinese counterparts for the signing of a financial supervisory agreement to facilitate the industry's inroads into China, he said.
The Taiwanese financial regulator has allowed local brokerages to set up branches across the Strait, but a lack of a bilateral MOU, which is required by the Chinese financial regulator to get its approval, has obstructed local securities houses' expansion in China.
Seventeen local securities brokers have established around 26 representative offices in China for handling inquiries, but they do not provide financial products and services.
However, the impasse seems to be on the way out, as the associations on both sides of the Strait have been in close contact recently to explore the possibility of signing bilateral agreements, according to the Chinese-language news report.
Financial supervisory officials of both sides reportedly would be present at the meeting in October as consultants, and may talk about technical issues surrounding the signing of MOUs.
The relevant authorities may copy the pattern adopted to organize charter flights for the Lunar New Year holiday earlier this year to facilitate signing of the proposed MOU. In this instance, private organizations negotiated and signed pacts on behalf of the governments of both sides, the report said.
In response, local securities regulators denied the reports, saying that they did not have any plans to promote such an agreement in the immediate future and have not received any relevant information from the association.
"And we have no timetable for the issue either," said Wu Yui-chun (
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