Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benitez yesterday said the friendship between his country and Taiwan would never change and that Paraguay would forever remain Taiwan’s loyal ally in South America.
Asked about his country’s commitment to Taiwan amid a rash of defections by allies in Latin America and the Caribbean to China, Abdo Benitez told a news conference in Taipei that Paraguay has business relations with every country in the world, but that was no reason to abandon its allies.
“We won’t sacrifice our ties with any of our allies or good friends” over business relations with another country, he said.
Photo: EPA
“We firmly believe no country in the world can restrict our sovereign decision to make friends with another country,” he added.
Paraguay has had diplomatic ties with Taiwan since 1957 and is its only ally in South America among its 17 worldwide.
Since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in May 2016, Taiwan has lost five diplomatic allies, including three in the Central American and Caribbean region: Panama, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
Paraguay can serve as a gateway for Taiwanese businesses to the huge South American market, which has a population of 400 million, and to the North American market, Abdo Benitez said.
Paraguay’s economy has been growing at a rate of at least 4.5 percent annually for the past 20 years and it has an excellent investment climate and stable social order, he said.
With its tax incentives and sound legal protections for foreign investors, Paraguay is encouraging Taiwanese businesses to invest there, he said.
After more than 60 years of diplomatic relations, Abdo Benitez said he hopes to further enhance bilateral relations so that the two sides could become strategic partners to their mutual benefit.
Taiwan is renowned for its technological advancements, while Paraguay’s main exports are agricultural products, he said, adding that the two countries complement each other and are a perfect match.
Abdo Benitez, his wife, Silvana Lopez Moreira de Abdo, and a Paraguayan delegation are in Taiwan on a six-day visit at Tsai’s invitation to attend Wednesday’s Double Ten National Day celebrations.
In an address at an honor guard ceremony in Taipei on Monday, Abdo Benitez said the trip was like a “homecoming,” because his family has close ties to Taiwan.
His father, Mario Abdo Benitez Sr, served as private secretary to former Paraguayan president Alfredo Stroessner, and helped forge diplomatic relations with Taiwan 61 years ago.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS