The planned economic cooperation agreement between Taiwan and Singapore will be a comprehensive accord that covers a wide spectrum of issues, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang said Aug. 5. The minister pointed out that the two nations will pursue a trade pact that includes agreements on trade, investment, intellectual property rights, electronic commerce and customs cooperation. Though the trade accord is similar to a free trade agreement, the two sides will not refer to it as such, Shih said, “because not using such a designation actually opens up more possibilities.” He noted that Singapore has entered trade agreements with Japan and India in recent years without calling them FTAs. “The tie-up will enable the two sides to jointly expand their market shares,” the official said, adding that the deal will create demand for Taiwan's agricultural and fishery products in Singapore given Singapore's relatively small agricultural sector. The MOEA has commissioned its Office of Trade Negotiations to form a negotiation team to lead all future discussions with its Singaporean counterpart, Shih said. According to the local newspaper Economic Daily News, the two sides are expected to enter into official negotiations after Lim Hng-kiang, Singapore's minister of Trade and Industry, visits Taipei later this year to attend a scheduled bilateral ministerial meeting. Shih expects the negotiations to be completed within one year. MOEA statistics show that Singapore is Taiwan's sixth largest trading partner, accounting for 3.55 percent of the island's external trade. Two-way commerce between the two states amounted to US$13.42 billion in 2009, with semiconductors and components and oil products being the major goods of trade. As of March 2010, Taiwanese firms have invested US$5.49 billion in the Lion City. Singapore is the sixth largest foreign investor in Taiwan. In related news, the ROC Presidential Office issued a statement Aug. 5 commending China for not interfering with the proposed deal between Taiwan and Singapore. - Agencies Separately, Taiwan's consumer price index showed a modest gain in July of 1.31 percent from a year ago on the back of rising food and travel costs, the Cabinet-level Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said Aug. 5. Prices of vegetables, tobacco, energy, aquaculture products and international travel all registered increases from the previous year. A price drop in consumer electronics helped offset some effects of such price hikes and held the index to a slight rise. The latest DGBAS tallies also show that the July CPI inched up 0.31 percent from June to 105.65. “So far we see inflationary pressure remaining under control, given the stable prices of other items,” Wu Chao-ming, head of the DGBAS' prices statistics section, said. On an accumulated basis, the CPI gained 1.21 percent year on year for the first seven months of the year. In comparison, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea all posted annual gains of 2 percent and higher during the same period. The DGBAS tallies also showed the wholesale price index, a measure of production costs and inflation, rose 5.34 percent from a year earlier to 107.82 last month.
