New Philippine Representative to Taiwan Gilberto Lauengco has made promoting the welfare of Filipino workers and increasing cooperation in trade and agriculture his top priorities.
“Primarily my main focus is to help the labor attache take care of the 150,000 Filipinos here, both their welfare and their safety,” Lauengco said in an interview on Sunday.
Lauengco, who has served as vice chairman of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taipei since 2016, is to continue in that role. He was appointed as resident representative to Taiwan on Aug. 1, taking over from MECO Chairman Angelito Banayo, who remains MECO chairman, but is to focus on his responsibilities at the MECO headquarters in Manila.
MECO serves as the de facto Philippine embassy in Taiwan due to the absence of formal relations between the two countries.
Beyond the welfare of Filipino workers, Lauengco’s other top goal is to expand trade between the two countries.
“We already have a working trade agreement. We’re trying to expand on that,” he said, adding that he is planning to invite more Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in the Philippines and offer them incentives such as provision of land, simplified investment procedures and a streamlined visa application process.
Agricultural cooperation is another priority.
“I’ve been all around Taiwan, and I’ve seen the depth and the level of technology in agriculture: your machinery, your cold storage technology, your vertical farms, everything,” he said. “So I’m trying to get those technologies to partner with Philippine technologies, so that we can assist the Philippines in so far as our agriculture industry is concerned.”
Lauengco plans to carry out a number of projects when the COVID-19 pandemic eases, including sending Filipino students to Taiwan to learn agriculture skills, and establishing more Taiwanese demonstration farms in the Philippines and agricultural technical missions.
Asked whether MECO has had difficulties maintaining relations with Taiwan given the close ties between Manila and Beijing, Lauengco said that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has given MECO leeway to handle ties with Taiwan.
However, he said that “there are constraints” that transcend Taiwan and the Philippines, and should be answered from a more global perspective.
“We work with the same constraints as everybody else in the region, but the [Taiwan-Philippine] relationship is there ... friendship, economic, health, those are things that will last even to the next generation,” he said.
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