Vice President Vincent Siew said June 21 that while the core items on the planned cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement’s early harvest list have largely been confirmed, the government will continue to work to include more items on the list until the last minute.
Speaking in an interview with news program host Sisy Chen on the local cable television channel CTiTV, Siew said the list of items subject to immediate tariff or market concessions under the proposed pact “is only the first train.”
Noting that “time is pressing” at this stage in the ECFA talks, Siew said further negotiations could be held later on to add more items to the list of goods and services to enjoy preferential tariff treatment.
Both Taipei and Beijing said they are pushing to sign the ECFA by the end of June, but no exact dates have been revealed.
The vice president also pointed out that Taiwan’s negotiators were able to gain Beijing’s consent to include 18 of 27 agricultural products proposed by the Council of Agriculture on the early harvest list in the current round of talks.
Regarding the fact that the mainland side has only agreed to the inclusion of about 60 percent of the petrochemical industry items put forward by Taiwan negotiators, Siew said the government has heard the “emotional reaction” of those companies whose products did not make it onto the initial list.
Stressing that the immediate effect of the early harvest list would be limited, Siew urged that the focus of attention should be placed on the planned ECFA’s overall and long-term economic benefits for the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Siew explained that besides an early harvest list of product items, the proposed pact also involves a list for service industries, an investment protection agreement, intellectual property rights protection, and a future cross-strait cooperation committee on industrial division and specialization. He said these mechanisms would be mutually beneficial to both Taiwan and mainland China.
Therefore, he continued, the construction of the cross-strait economic framework “must proceed in an orderly and gradual manner,” and cannot be accomplished in a single step.
Siew also noted that the mainland side has also requested the inclusion of various items on the early harvest list. However, Taiwan’s negotiators have succeeded in protecting 17 local sectors that are less competitive, including those that produce ready-to-wear clothing, undergarments and towels, to name a few, from being opened up under the planned pact, he pointed out. (SB)