Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) will sign a bilateral cooperation agreement with his Belize counterpart when he accompanies President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on a visit to the Central American country tomorrow, a foreign ministry official said yesterday.
Ou is part of a delegation headed by Ma that left yesterday on a nine-day visit to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in Central America — Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Weber Shih (施文斌), director-general of the Department of Economic and Trade Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Ou and his Belizean counterpart, Wilfred Elrington, would sign an agreement for cooperation in the field of information communication technology (ICT).
Under the planned agreement, the two countries will work together to develop long-term bilateral links in the ICT sector and will concentrate their efforts on areas such as electronic government, e-commerce and e-industry, as well as ICT-related education and training, Shih said.
Shih said the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) last year assisted Belize in establishing portal sites for its central government and ministry of foreign affairs and helped Belize’s ministry of economic affairs to build two data bank systems. The Belize National ICT Center, which is being built with assistance from Taiwan, will be inaugurated at the end of this year, he said.
Aside from the projects it is implementing in Belize, the ICDF has been working since 2006 to develop ICT cooperation projects in St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Lucia — three of Taiwan’s Caribbean allies.
The efforts have borne fruit, as St Lucia now has an electronic databank of automobile drivers, vehicles and driving licenses, which has improved government efficiency and the country’s capacity to crack down on crime, Shih said.
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