The suggestion by Japan’s most senior diplomat in Taiwan to hold a meeting of the Taiwan-Japan Economic Partnership Committee gives a boost to the nation’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Taiwan-Japan Relations Association Chairman Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) said yesterday.
Chiou made the remark at the 45th session of the Taiwan-Japan Economic and Trade Conference in response to Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association Chairman Mitsuo Ohashi telling the event that Taiwan’s efforts to ease trade regulations with Japan warranted a new meeting of the committee.
The government earlier this month announced that it would lift a ban on the importation of food products from Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture and four other prefectures that had been banned following the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The ban is to end on Feb. 28.
Ohashi said that lifting the ban would go a long way toward facilitating business ties between the two countries, including a tentative industrial cooperation project in semiconductor production.
Chiou said that a committee meeting should be scheduled as soon as possible.
The two countries need to discuss issues concerning trade, the economy, investment and Taiwan’s application to join the trade bloc, he said.
After the event, Chiou told reporters that the ban had been a major stumbling block for Taiwan’s CPTPP application, which relies on support from Japan, the bloc’s largest economy.
Taiwanese membership would not be possible as long as the ban remains in place, he said.
Chiou said that committee meetings — in which the two countries had deliberated a bilateral free-trade agreement and Taiwan’s path to membership in the then-proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CPTPP’s predecessor — were suspended in 2014, as Taiwan three years earlier imposed the ban and, unlike other nations, did not lift it at that time.
Chiou said that he pledged that Taiwan would reconvene the committee right after Ohashi’s remarks, as the gesture required an immediate response.
Opening Taiwan to foreign agricultural products is a precondition for joining international trade organizations, he said, adding that lifting import bans has already led to short-term gains.
The lifting of a ban on the importation of pork products containing the feed additive ractopamine directly contributed to the resumption of talks with the US over the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, he added.
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