The 12th round of talks on the cross-strait trade in goods agreement will be held on Saturday. That’s the word from deputy economics minister Cho Shih-chao on Thursday.
The economics ministry hopes to complete all negotiations on the agreement by the end of the year. Economics ministry official Wu Ming-ji says that the talks will be focused on four industries: panels, petrochemicals, automobiles, and machine tools.
"We must fight to protect our panels industry, because the trade volume involved is very big. In addition to panels, the other three industries are traditional industries," Wu said. "Small to medium size companies are also included in the rubric of traditional industries. If we are able to sign the agreement, then we can lessen the pressure of having to move factories out of Taiwan. We hope that through our efforts, we’ll be able to keep them in Taiwan."
As to whether tariffs can be lowered to the same levels found in the China-Korea FTA, Wu said that the economics ministry will do all it can for Taiwan amid the warming in cross-strait ties.