The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is to suspend the release of a preannouncement notice regarding planned restrictions on semiconductor exports to South Africa amid a dispute about Taiwan's representative office in the country, it said today.
The decision was made following discussions with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) after the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa received a request from the South African government to enter negotiations.
The MOEA has since suspended the public notice that Taiwan would switch to approval-based exports for 47 items — including diode chips and wafers, integrated circuits and memory — bound for South Africa. The notice was posted as an electronic bulletin to the MOEA Web site on Tuesday.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The measures would not have been implemented until they passed a two-month notice period on the Executive Yuan's online gazette system.
The MOEA said in a statement that after discussions with MOFA, it has suspended the release of the preannouncement and removed the electronic bulletin from the MOEA Web site.
The plan for approval-based chip exports had not yet been published in the Executive Yuan Gazette and had not entered the formal preannouncement process, it said.
The dispute arose last year, when the South African government sought to downgrade the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa and recategorize it as a "trade office." It also attempted to relocate the office from the administrative capital Pretoria to the commercial capital Johannesburg.
South Africa in March changed the name of the office on its Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) Web site to the "Taipei Commercial Office."
On July 21, DIRCO further announced the renaming and downgrading of the main representative office in Pretoria and branch office in Cape Town. South Africa changed the main office's name to the "Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg" and the branch office's name to the "Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town" and began referring to them as "international organizations" instead of "a foreign representation in South Africa."
Taipei believes South Africa is bowing to Chinese pressure.
At the end of July, the MOFA announced that it would consider countermeasures, including restrictions on chip exports.
Official data from Taiwan showed that last year the country exported to South Africa roughly US$4 million of the semiconductor-related goods that were included in the proposed export suspension list.
Despite the South African government's moves, the representative office is maintaining normal operations in Pretoria and continues to provide necessary services to its nationals.
Additional reporting by CNA
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