Taiwan’s finance, transportation and technology sectors would be early beneficiaries of a proposed free-trade pact between Taiwan and Singapore, a government official said yesterday.
“We saw broad cooperation between Singapore and South Korea and Japan in the area of financial services after they signed free-trade pacts and that could happen to Taiwan too,” said an official from the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Office of Negotiations, who declined to be named.
Taiwan and Singapore announced earlier yesterday that they would explore the possibility of signing an economic cooperation agreement by the end of the year. Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said the banking, transportation and agriculture sectors would likely be the first on the negotiating table.
Shih said a free-trade deal with Singapore would help expand Taiwan’s market, especially because Singapore is famed for its services sectors, such as finance and transportation.
Meanwhile, in Taipei, the stock market advanced in early trading and the TAIEX briefly stood above the 8,000-point benchmark, but it was unable to carry that momentum because of profit taking.
“The prospect of a Taiwan-Singapore trade pact did give a brief lift to the Taiwan stock market, which has been dampened by weak corporate earnings forecasts and profit-taking pressure,” said Andrew Teng (鄧安瀾), an analyst with Taiwan International Securities Corp (金鼎證券).
Teng said the planned talks on an economic pact with Singapore would help ease the fear of being shut out of ASEAN, the regional economic block.
The official at the Office of Negotiations said Taiwan could also see business opportunities in the green energy or solar sector because Singapore was trying to build itself into an Asian research and development center, adding that Taiwan was strong in manufacturing solar chips and solar modules.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JASON TAN
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