Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) yesterday said his ministry would find out more from Paraguayan presidential candidate Efrain Alegre about his remarks that ties with Taiwan have damaged the nation’s agricultural sector by shutting out the Chinese market.
Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of a legislative session, Wu said he was “concerned” by Alegre’s assertion in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that maintaining relations with Taipei had made it hard for Paraguay to sell beef and soy to China.
Wu later told lawmakers that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was communicating with people who are familiar with the issue to understand the “official stance” of Alegre, one of the leading contenders to win Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday next week.
Photo: CNA
Wu said his ministry would continue to do its best to maintain ties with Paraguay, the only country in South America to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Alegre, who has vowed to cut ties with Taipei and establish diplomatic relations with Beijing, on Wednesday said that the “current relationship is insufficient,” vowing to “solve this based on national interests” if elected.
The latest polls show Alegre neck-and-neck with his main rival, the ruling conservative Colorado Party’s candidate, Santiago Pena, who has pledged to maintain ties with Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Roy Lee (李淳) yesterday said that no matter which party wins Paraguay’s presidential election, the ministry is planning to send representatives to attend the new leader’s inauguration in August.
Lee did not say if President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) or Vice President William Lai (賴清德) would lead the delegation.
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