To end the nation's dependence on foreign suppliers, the military yesterday staged a public display of military hardware to entice local businesses to get into the act of building and maintaining weapons and their components.
The market value of the sector is estimated to be NT$27 billion this year alone.
"It is the government's policy to integrate the defense industry into the civilian sector. It is hoped that we will no longer rely so heavily on foreign countries to provide us with weaponry. We hope to buy weaponry mainly from domestic companies in the future," Minister of National Defense Wu Shih-wen (伍世文) said.
"In recent years, we have contracted with around 200 domestic companies for maintaining and producing more than 3,000 components of weapons. We found these companies through staging displays like the one we are holding today," he said.
Wu made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the largest public display of weapons components ever in Taiwan, which will last for three days at Taipei County's Wuku Industrial Park.
Similar displays have been held every year since 1996, but this is the first time such a display was set up outside a military site. Last year, the event took place at the Taoyuan branch of the military-run Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology.
Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
But Taipei's incumbent County Commissioner, the DPP's Su Chen-chang (蘇貞昌), sparked a frenzy of speculation when he failed to show for the occasion. Reports in the Chinese media suggest that he wanted to avoid the appearance that the event was staged for his benefit, as his post is one of the most hotly contested in Saturday's polls.
The display consisted of over 3,000 weapons components, 70 of them made by foreign producers and the rest by domestic ones.
"Last year, the market value for services we offered to civilian defense contractors was worth NT$24 billion, but only NT$3.4 billion of it was successfully farmed out," said Fu Yu-li (傅永利), executive officer of the government's military-industrial complex development team. "We hope more deals can be struck this year."
The items up for release to civilian companies for maintenance and production cover a wide range of arms, including fighter planes, warships, tanks, helicopters and missiles.
Certain components of the F-16 and IDF fighter plane are also on the list, but the French-made Mirage 2000-5 is excluded.
An official with the air force at the exhibition site explained that the Mirage's absence is because of the contract Taiwan signed with France on the purchase of its 60 Mirages. The official declined to make any further comment.
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