The Honduran government is seeking to re-engage with the Taiwanese market, Honduran Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Reina said on Monday, as one of the Central American nation’s major exports has plummeted since it cut ties with Taiwan.
Honduras severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in March 2023 in favor of Beijing.
Honduras hoped to benefit from a free-trade agreement with China, but found that Beijing instead dumped goods into Honduras, resulting in a serious bilateral trade imbalance, reports have said.
Photo: Reuters
In an exclusive interview with the Honduran media Radio America, Reina said that due to the delay in opening the Chinese market, Honduras is hoping to re-enter the Taiwanese market to save its white shrimp industry.
After losing the Taiwanese market, the Honduran white shrimp industry, a major export for the Central American nation, is on the verge of collapse, the report said.
Honduras is also hoping to cooperate with South Korea to obtain the appropriate import health permits, Reina said.
Before March 2023, Honduras and Taiwan had more than 80 years of diplomatic relations.
Through military, educational and economic cooperation, Taiwan not only supported Honduran agriculture and offered technological assistance, but was also the primary market for Honduran white shrimp, the report said.
In 2022, nearly 40 percent of Honduran white shrimp exports went to Taiwan, it said.
According to data from National Association of Honduran Aquaculturists (ANDAH), just two years after Honduras cut ties with Taiwan, its white shrimp exports have plummeted 67 percent, leaving more than 14,000 workers unemployed.
According to the report, China promised to purchase large amounts of Honduran white shrimp when the two countries established diplomatic relations, but two years later, that promise is yet to be fulfilled.
When Chinese businesses visited Honduras in June last year to inspect shrimp farms, they announced they would purchase 250 containers of white shrimp, the report said.
However, they only purchased one container in the end, causing ANDAH to call China “rude and disgusting,” it said.
According to data from the Central Bank of Honduras, Honduran exports to China last year amounted to US$35.9 million, while Chinese exports to Honduras increased to US$2.55 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of more than US$2.5 billion, Honduran newspaper La Prensa reported.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS