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Updated Sunday, February 15, 2009 9:20 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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DPP urges consensus before CECA is signed

The economics ministry has been closely monitoring the formation of a regional economic bloc including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its neighboring trade partners of China, Japan and South Korea, according to Yiin.

The minister continued that Taiwan's exports would encounter tough challenges when the “ASEAN plus one”—ASEAN and China—free trade zone becomes operational in 2010.

To counter, the government has been seeking to sign free trade agreements (FTAs) with Taiwan's major trading partners and has spared no efforts to work out strategies to deal with its exclusion from the regional economic bloc.

Also yesterday, Lawmaker Pan Meng-an of the DPP said that thorough discussions by various social sectors are badly needed, so as to achieve a consensus on whether the pact would be signed or not.

Basically, Pan said he is opposed to the signing of a CECA with China, as it will fuel an exodus of Taiwanese enterprises and make Taiwan's industries hollow out further. If Chinese workers are allowed into the island under the pact, then the island's economy would worsen, Pan warned.

Meanwhile Lawmaker Yang Chiong-ying of the ruling Kuomintang said that if both sides of the Taiwan Strait can sign the CECA on the basis of equality, then it will help spawn the development of local industries.

Also yesterday, Liu Teh-hsiun, deputy chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, said that negotiation on the signing of the CECA won't be on the agendas for the third meeting between P.K. Chiang, chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, and his Chinese counterpart Chairman Chen Yunlin of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS).

Liu said that CECA is a vital matter for the normalization of trade and economic ties between Taiwan and China, but an agreement of this kind covers a wide range of different subjects, so that the content and even its final designation require discussions among relevant agencies before it can be brought up in SEF-ARATS talks, Liu said.

The CECA would allow the two sides to offer each other economic and trade privileges, including the lifting of tariffs on imports and non-tariff trade barriers, or to further hold existing tariff and trade policies.

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