The legislature’s Finance Committee yesterday approved an amendment that would provide tariff-free treatment for 234 products imported from three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — Belize, Honduras and Paraguay.
The proposed amendment to the Customs Import Tariff Act (海關進口稅則), approved by the Executive Yuan in August, is to go to the legislative floor to be reviewed and voted on.
The bill would allow the import duty-free of 199 products from Belize, 25 products from Honduras and 10 products from Paraguay, to be instituted either on a designated date or over three years, the Ministry of Finance said in August.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
Most of the items to be made exempt from import duties are agricultural products, such as beef, pork, fruit and cashew nuts, the ministry said.
If enacted, the amendment would bring Taiwan’s tariff rules in line with a trade deal that Taiwan inked with Belize in September last year, the ministry said.
Taiwan and Belize signed an Economic Cooperation Agreement in September last year, but it has not yet been ratified by the legislature, the Bureau of Foreign Trade said.
The scrapping of tariffs on products imported from Honduras and Paraguay would also be beneficial because it would expand bilateral trade cooperation and help consolidate Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with the two Latin American allies, the ministry said in a statement.
The committee also approved amendments to the Customs Act (關稅法), including those intended to reinforce the monitoring of goods in transit by the Customs Administration, and the management of import and export warehouses.
While lawmakers also considered other amendments aimed at increasing penalties for breaches of the Customs Act by private companies, they were unable to reach a consensus.
Those proposals were set aside for cross-party negotiations, which do not have a time limit.
AI REVOLUTION: The event is to take place from Wednesday to Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s halls 1 and 2 and would feature more than 1,100 exhibitors Semicon Taiwan, an annual international semiconductor exhibition, would bring leaders from the world’s top technology firms to Taipei this year, the event organizer said. The CEO Summit is to feature nine global leaders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), Applied Materials Inc, Google, Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc, Microsoft Corp, Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre and Marvell Technology Group Ltd, SEMI said in a news release last week. The top executives would delve into how semiconductors are positioned as the driving force behind global technological innovation amid the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the organizer said. Among them,
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
RSS