Taiwan' s Footwear Makers Plans to Protest China-made Shoes Here

Taipei, June 16, 2006 (CENS)--Following in the steps of towel makers, Taiwan' s footwear manufacturers are planning to turn in their petition to the government at the end of July for conducting an investigation on the dumping of mainland China-made shoes here.

Taiwan' s shoe and related products makers recently called for the government to pay more attention on the dumping of shoes and related products from the mainland, which have become a serious threat to local footwear makers. They suggested that the government should adopt some measures to alleviate the situation, including the raising of import tariffs, the imposition of anti-dumping taxes, or the establishment of thresholds on the imports of such products.

To urge the government to take the issue seriously, Taiwan' s shoe and related product associations around the island decided to summon their members to attend a petition-oriented parade to attract the government' s attention.

Some domestic footwear makers indicated that currently, Taiwan imposes tariffs ranging from 5% to 7.5% on footwear products imported from the mainland; however, Taiwan-made shoes exported to the mainland have to face an import duty as high as 24%. Moreover, the wholesale price of one pair of shoes made in the mainland in the local market there is NT$600 (US$17.65 at US$1 = NT$34); but trickily enough, the price of the same pair of the shoes is quoted at only NT$30-60 (US$0.88-1.77) when exported to Taiwan to save import tariffs. Yet, the retailing price of the shoes in Taiwan' s domestic market is ironically as high as NT$2,000 (US$58.82).

The manufacturers complained that this is quite unfair to Taiwan' s footwear makers and encourages their counterparts across the Taiwan Strait to dump their footwear products on the island, and this is one of the main reasons for the shrinkage of Taiwan' s footwear industry.

Some two to three decades ago, Taiwan' s footwear industry had a total of 20,000 to 30,000 shoe and shoe-related satellite plants around the island, and boasted more than one million employees during this heyday. Beginning in the late 1980s, when Taiwan' s manufacturing environment declined, domestic footwear makers started to move off the island, mainly to the mainland. As a result, the industry has gradually shrunk, and the situation worsened when the government here decided in 2002 to open the market to shoes imported from the mainland. Today, the number of shoe plants in Taiwan has been slashed to merely 3,000 to 4,000, with a total workforce of around 300,000 persons.

Currently Taiwan' s market needs around 130 million pairs of shoes per year, of which, 100 million pairs come from abroad; and those coming from the mainland take a lion' s share of more than 70%. Last year, shoes imported from the mainland reached to 66.46 million pairs, up 13.23% from a year earlier.