Land Bank holds the "Our Country's Participation in Regional Economic Integration and the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement" symposium

(Taiwan Business News) In order to understand the pros, cons and business opportunities that the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement brings to our country's enterprises, Taiwan Land Bank held 3 sessions of the "Our Country's Participation in Regional Economic Integration and the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement" symposium on May 6, 8 and 12 in Taipei, Hsinchu and Taichung (the Chiayi-Tainan, Kaohsiung-Pingtung, eastern and offshore island regions participated via video conference), inviting Chang Chun-fu, Director-General of the Bureau of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Deputy Directors-General Hsu Ta-wei and Chiang Wen-jo to serve as speakers, exploring the two major topics of regional economic integration and the Cross-Strait service trade, so as to help domestic business owners grasp the development opportunities of regional market liberalization.

The first session of this symposium series featured a keynote speech by Director-General of the Bureau of Foreign Trade Chang Chun-fu, who personally attended at Land Bank's head office on May 6; the participants were supervisors at all levels of Land Bank's head office and supervisors of business units in the greater Taipei area. The meeting first explained our country's current economic and trade situation, including the results of promoting the signing of FTAs/ECAs abroad and the challenges currently facing our country's economy, such as the impact of global economic risks on our country's export performance, insufficient diversification of export markets, concentration of the export product structure, insufficient competitiveness of main products, the trend of international division of labor leading to a relatively high proportion of our country's overseas production, and the rise of international regional economic integration affecting our country's export competitiveness. Regarding regional economic integration, global regional economic integration is accelerating, and bilateral and regional FTAs are prevalent internationally; among them, the regional economic integration frameworks more important to our country include the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) and the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). The meeting also analyzed the necessity of our country joining regional economic integration and the impact of being unable to join.

Regarding the Cross-Strait service trade, the mainland side opened a total of 80 items that are better than its specific commitments under the WTO, and gave our country's businesses conditions better than those given to other foreign businesses; our side opened 64 specific commitments, all of which are already open to foreign businesses. The benefits of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement to our country include establishing an institutionalized platform for handling matters related to Cross-Strait service trade, providing opportunities for the development of our country's service industry, increasing foreign investment and creating job opportunities, and helping our country sign economic and trade agreements with other countries.

Land Bank President Kao Ming-hsien stated that signing the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement is of major benefit to the development of our country's financial industry, among which the business opportunities for domestic banks include: 1. The mainland relaxes the scope of recognition of Taiwanese businesses; 2. The mainland opens up the establishment by Taiwan-funded banks of branches in different cities within the same province in Fujian Province; 3. The mainland opens up the establishment of village and township banks by Taiwan-funded banks; 4. Opening up mainland banks, when handling overseas wealth management business, to invest in Taiwanese financial products; 5. Opening up the channel for RMB qualified foreign institutional investors to invest in the mainland capital market, creating a mechanism for Taiwanese RMB funds to flow back to the mainland; 6. Supporting Cross-Strait banks in carrying out related equity investment cooperation, which can help Taiwanese bankers establish strategic alliances with mainland banks, greatly helping domestic bankers expand into the mainland market and move toward internationalization.