Chinese Taipei Making Significant Progress Towards APEC Goals - New Report
Canberra, Australia, January 17, 2007 -- An independent report has found that Chinese Taipei is making positive progress towards achieving APEC's free trade and investment goals.
The 'Study Report on Chinese Taipei's Independent Action Plan (IAP)' to achieve its APEC goals was prepared by Dr Junsok Yang, Associate Professor in Economics from the Catholic University of Korea, and Gloria Pasadilla, Research Fellow from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
The report looked at a range of areas that are part of Chinese Taipei's efforts to reach the APEC Bogor Goals, which set the target of free and open trade for industrialized economies by 2010 and 2020 for developing economies.
As one of the four Asian tigers and an APEC member since 1991, the report highlights the positive economic growth of the economy and describes Chinese Taipei as: "one of the most successful developing economies in the 20th century.
"In the current peer review report, we, the reviewers, found that Chinese Taipei has made significant progress toward the Bogor Goals."
The report explores the mechanics of Chinese Taipei's success stating: "Market liberalization has played a crucial part in the development of Chinese Taipei. For Chinese Taipei, exports have played the part of the engine of growth. Much of Chinese Taipei's economic growth has been driven by exports of manufactured goods such as textiles, electronics and IT products.
"Foreign investment, like foreign trade, also played a significant part in Chinese Taipei's development; indeed trade and investment were two faces of the same coin, two major pillars of its growth trajectory."
The report also noted the efforts of Chinese Taipei to achieve the APEC goals across a number of sectors: "Chinese Taipei believes that Bogor Goals is something that is to be continually striven for, rather than something that can be explicitly achieved.
"We found that Chinese Taipei made especially noteworthy improvement in customs procedures. The clearance time for cargo is among the shortest in all APEC member economies. Significant improvements have also been made in tariffs, investment, intellectual property rights, services, and government procurement."
All APEC Member Economies implement IAPs to guide them in their efforts to achieve APEC's Bogor Goals. The IAP review process program provides each Member Economy with the opportunity to have their progress towards APEC's goals assessed by Independent Experts.
Four APEC Member Economies are having their IAPs' reviewed at the current round of APEC meetings in Canberra. This process involves a presentation by the Independent Experts to a meeting of Member Economies followed by an opportunity for these economies to question the economy under review on the details of their IAP.
The review of Chinese Taipei's IAP took place in Canberra this morning.