Japansk expert: Handelsavtal med Kina vitamininjektion för Taiwan

Den japanske affärsstrategen Kenichi Ohmae sade efter ett möte idag med taiwanesiska regeringstjänstemän att det planerade handelsavtalet med Kina kommer att bli en vitamininjektion för Taiwans ekonomi.

Ohmae tillade att de flesta experterna trodde att det skulle vara omöjligt att driva igenom ett avtal under president Ma Ying-jeou's första mandatperiod, men att det nu verkar väldigt troligt.

BILD: Kenichi Ohmae (till vänster) skakar hand med Taiwans president Ma Ying-jeou. Foto. Office of the President, Republic of China (Taiwan)

Trade pact with China will be a 'vitamin' for Taiwan: Japanese expert

Central News Agency
Taipei, June 22

(By Lee Shu-hua and Maubo Chang)

A Japanese business strategist said here Tuesday that Taiwan's planned trade pact with China would be a "vitamin" for Taiwan's economy.

Kenichi Ohmae told senior Taiwan government officials that the next year will be vital to the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) if it is going to be developed into a full-fledged free trade pact.

Neighboring states are keeping a close eye on negotiations between Taiwan and China regarding the pact, he said in a speech at the Presidential Office.

When President Ma Ying-jeou first said he hoped the pact could be finished within his first term, most analysts thought it was impossible, Ohmae said, adding that now it seems very likely.

Most analysts expected the negotiations to frequently run into difficulties and predicted Taiwan wouldn't be able to achieve very desirable results, but China had shown significant patience toward Taiwan and "the talks are going marvelously, and 'the pact' will enable Taiwan to play a pivotal role in the greater China area, " Ohmae said.

Noting that there are 370 round-trip flights between Taiwan and China weekly, and that Taiwan levies a 17 percent business income tax on local companies, Ohmae said that "this coupled with the trade pact with China will give Taiwan an advantage" and make the island a regional business hub, if not an aeronautic hub.

Taiwan should go ahead with its negotiations with China, not only sealing the ECFA but also developing it into a full free trade agreement, which will put the country on a level playing ground, Ohmae said.

In addition to exploring the Chinese market, the country should also explore other emerging economies, he said.

He said the improved ties between Taiwan and China have caused concern in South Korea, which is competing with Taiwan for the Chinese market. Taiwan's booming exports to China helped the island recover more quickly than other states from the impact of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Ohmae said.

"I can't understand why some people in the country would complain about it," he said. "Why would some journalists complain?" The Presidential Office said that during a private meeting with Ohmae before his speech, President Ma asked the business guru whether he thought Taiwan's economy was overly reliant on China.

"No, compared with other states in Asia, Taiwan is not overly reliant on China, " the office quoted him as saying. All of Asia is increasingly dependent on China economically, and Taiwan is playing the role of pathfinder by putting its cultural affinity with China to good use, he said.

In response to an audience question, Ohmae suggested Taiwan lobby the Beijing-based China Mobile, one of China's largest telecom companies, to list its stock on the Taipei exchange to solve the problem of the local bourse being overwhelmed with individual investors, who make up 70 percent of all investors in the bourse.

"With assets of more than that of 700 listed companies put together, China Mobile would attract more foreign institutional investors to deal on the local bourse, boosting the trade volume significantly," he said.

According to its 2009 annual report, China Mobile's assets stood at 490 billion yuan (US$72 billion).

"It would be relatively easy for China Mobile to list on the Taipei Exchange, as its prospectus is written in Chinese, which is familiar to local investors," Ohmae said.

In response to another question, Ohmae dismissed worries that Taiwanese could scramble to change their bank deposits into Chinese yuan in light of the fact that interest rates on the yuan are much higher than those for the New Taiwan dollar.

He predicted that the Chinese yuan, which appreciated by 0.4 percent the previous day, could not continue its upward trend for long. Instead, he said it would dip in value after a while, deterring people from keeping it too long.