Taiwan and India are close to signing a migration and mobility deal in a potential solution to the labor shortage across large swathes of the Taiwanese economy, an India-based newspaper said on Tuesday.
Representatives of the two governments anticipate a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to materialize next month at the earliest, the Hindustan Times said, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
Taiwan suffers from worker shortages in manufacturing, construction, household work, agriculture and fisheries, the sources said, adding that Taipei has been viewing India as a possible source of labor.
Taiwanese officials expressed interest in northeastern India due to the similarities the region bears to Taiwanese culture and preferences in food, the newspaper cited them as saying.
Bilateral trade has been growing steadily in recent years, with India ranking as Taiwan’s 14th-largest export destination and its 18th-largest source of imports, it said, adding that trade volume has increased from US$1.19 billion to US$8.4 billion between 2001 and last year.
The signing of the MOU would move the development of bilateral trade in the right direction, and has immense potential, Manharsinh Laxmanbhai Yadav, director general of India-Taipei Association, said during a negotiation earlier this month.
Taiwan and India have no official diplomatic ties, but there are representative offices which were mutually established in 1995, and both countries are bound by shared agreements on tariffs, taxes and investments.
Recently, Taiwanese tech enterprises, including the Hon Hai Group, Delta Electronics, Wistron and Pegatron, as well as maritime shipping, manufacturing and gaming industries have made investments in India in response to global supply chain adjustments.
The Ministry of Labor said that Taiwan as of last month employed 746,596 migrant workers in traditional industries and the caregiving sector, with the majority of that workforce insisting of Indonesian, Vietnamese, Filipino and Thai migrants.
The nation also recruits workers from Malaysia and Mongolia, but without much success because only single-digit numbers of workers hailed from these countries.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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