Signing an economic pact with Singapore will help Taiwan more effectively explore the Southeast Asian and South Asian markets, which Singapore is on good terms with, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said yesterday.
Yang made the remarks after Taiwan and Singapore announced earlier in the day that the two countries had agreed to explore the feasibility of inking a trade pact based on the groundwork laid by the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) that was signed with China in late June.
Two-way Taiwan-Singapore trade totaled US$13.4 billion last year, with the figure for the first half of this year reaching US$9.3 billion.
Yang said Taiwan is seeking to forge such an accord with Singapore because of the city state’s role in ASEAN and not simply because it is an important trade partner.
“A Taiwan-Singapore economic cooperation agreement should also help Taiwan step up its relations with the 10 ASEAN member states, as well as India,” Yang said.
NOT AN FTA
Asked why the planned deal with Singapore would be an economic cooperation agreement and not a free-trade agreement (FTA), Yang said not all bilateral agreements signed under the framework of the WTO were FTAs.
“Singapore signed 20 similar agreements with other countries, 15 of which were FTAs, while five were not. All 10 trade pacts Japan has signed with other countries and many others New Zealand and Australia have signed with other countries are also not FTAs,” he said.
When asked if China would be an impediment to the process of signing an economic agreement with Singapore, Yang simply said Taiwan has the right to ink an agreement.
According to Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠), the Singapore pact would be “key” for Taiwan to develop further economic relationships with ASEAN, which behind China is the most important center of economic development in the region.
Being able to start to negotiate the planned trade agreement with Singapore has added significance, he said.
“Singapore plays a dominant role in the development of ASEAN. Previous experience shows that many countries, for example the US and Japan, signed bilateral agreements with Singapore before concluding similar deals with the ASEAN nations,” the deputy minister said.
Lin said the proposed economic pact with Singapore would be a bilateral deal under the WTO framework.
“In accordance with WTO rules, the agreement doesn’t have to be between countries, it can be between economies,” Lin said.
Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) said Singapore is the most active Asian country in seeking FTAs with its major trading partners.
“The city-state has long intended to sign such a pact with Taiwan, but such efforts were dampened by the special situation in the Taiwan Strait in the past,” Liu said.
CROSS-STRAIT ISSUES
In early 2000, both Taiwan and Singapore expressed their wish to forge such an agreement, but the proposal was then delayed “for some reason” and no progress had been made since, Liu said.
“After China signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with Taiwan, Singapore is now willing to follow suit,” the government’s top economic planner said.
Taiwan has also consulted on various occasions with the US, the EU, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and other countries over their interest in negotiating similar agreements, Lin said without elaborating.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
RSS