Raw agricultural materials imported from China to domestic agricultural biotechnology parks could end up on the local market, members of the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday, adding that the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ plans to restrict the use of imports to manufacturing export-bound goods were unrealistic.
“This amounts to a complete deregulation for manufacturers within the zone,” union spokesman Hsu Po-jen (許博任) said. “Changing the rules will effectively enable forbidden Chinese products to flow into the Taiwanese market.”
Agricultural products and related goods have been one of the key local market sectors sheltered from Chinese competition following the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, making them a major subject of negotiations over a trade in goods agreement.
While those talks focused primarily on processed food products, the new rules proposed by the ministry last month would allow raw goods to be imported for the first time, Hsu said, adding that the exception for agricultural biotechnology zones amounted to a regulatory “hole.”
He said members of the Economic Democracy Union were most concerned about the possible effects on the Pingtung Agricultural Biotechnology Park, because the nation’s only other two agricultural parks are locally sponsored and focused on flower horticulture.
“Once the door has been opened, it is hard to foresee what firms will choose to import,” he said, adding that companies could take advantage of the regulations to mix Chinese raw materials into products bound for the domestic market.
While new rules specify that the materials can only be used for export-bound products, imported raw materials will be practically indistinguishable from similar domestic material, making tracking their usage infeasible, he said.
“Agricultural raw materials are unusual in that you cannot really examine them once they have been added into a finished product,” he said, adding that there are also food safety concerns, in addition to the potential impact on local agricultural markets.
”A spare industrial part will have a number and you can track where its placed, but that does not hold true for food products,” he said.
Industrial parks are already allowed imports of raw materials and spare parts from China to manufacture goods for export.
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