ECFA talks set for 26th

China's intermediary Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), the counterpart of Taiwan's SEF, made a simultaneous announcement for the meeting in Beijing.

SEF Vice Chairman and Secretary General Kao Koong-lian will lead a 13-member Taiwanese delegation to Beijing for the meeting with his counterpart, Zheng Lizhong, vice president of ARATS who will head the Chinese delegation.

The first round of ECFA negotiations, dubbed a “working-level meeting of experts,” will focus mainly on procedural matters such as the overall arrangements for the framework agreement, the naming of the pact, and how functions and responsibilities should be allocated, the SEF said.

Some members on Taiwan's negotiating team are incumbent officials at government agencies, including Huang Chih-peng, director general of the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Lee Li-chen, chief of the Department of Economic Affairs under the MAC, and other key MOEA, MAC and SEF officials will also take part in the talks.

The SEF reiterated the proposed ECFA is aimed at enabling Taiwan to be part of the regional economic integration, maintain companies' export competitiveness, and rev up its economy as the new “ASEAN plus China” free trade area comes into effect.

The free trade area comprising China and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) took effect on Jan. 1, allowing tariff-free treatment for the vast majority of products shipped among nations within the gigantic trade bloc.

When answering reporters' questions yesterday, Premier Wu Den-yih said negotiators from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will exchange views and work out deals on an equal footing.

Wu said he expects the participants to give priority to drafting the “early harvest list” of industries because enterprises in certain sectors here are now facing greater challengers and difficulties in coping with the new situations arising from the formal formation of the “ASEAN + China” free trade zone.

SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung said in a speech delivered in Taipei Saturday that after Taiwan and China sign the ECFA, Taiwan's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to rise by 1.65-1.72 percent and an increase in exports will create some 260,000 new job openings.

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