MOEA to Remove Investment Barriers via Cross-Agency Meetings

Taipei, Aug. 11, 2006 (CENS)--In order to boost domestic investment activities, Chen Ruey-long, the newly installed minister of economic affairs, has instructed to resume regular cross-ministerial meetings to remove barriers in the fields of environment, labor, and tax to major investment projects.

One major purpose for the instruction is to reactivate three major petrochemical investment projects now mired in environmental disputes: the Kuokuang petrochemical project, expansion of the third naphtha cracking complex, and moving of the fifth naphtha cracking complex. The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) hopes to step up solution of the environmental disputes over those projects via regular meetings with the Environmental Protection Administration.

In addition, MOEA also plans to help the industrial sector solve their problems concerning environmental protection, labor shortage, and tax incentives via regular meetings with government agencies in charge.

Problems confronting local businesses in their investment and management are mostly in the fields of environment protection, labor issues, and taxation burden. Therefore, the MOEA officials used to meet representatives from the Environmental Protection Administration, Council of Labor Affairs, and the Ministry of Finance regularly to coordinate their stances on these issues. The system, though, was disrupted following the regime change in 2000.

MOEA officials pointed out that in the past, for major investment issues, there were often scores of communications and negotiations between the drafting of solution proposals by staffers and face-to-face meetings between economics minister and his counterparts in related government agencies. Only those issues which could not be solved by the mechanism were submitted to the Executive Yuan for decision.

Chen Ruey-long pointed out labor shortage is the most urgent issue confronting local factories. For solution of the problem, he had visited Lee Ying-yuan, minister of the Council of Labor Affairs, recently, discussing solutions to the labor-shortage problem.
Chen believed that the key to creating a favorable domestic investment environment is to help local businesses solve their investment and management problems.

In a related story, in their meeting with Chen Ruey-long, local business leaders, including chairmen of Chinese National Federation of Industries and Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association (TEEMC), proposed to establish cross-Taiwan Strait special logistic zones to facilitate cross-Strait logistic division of labor and encourage Taiwanese businesses in China to return home. Rock Hsu, chairman of TEEMC, also advocated adopting a uniform 15% business income tax, in line with similar practice in Ireland, Singapore, and Hong Kong, to create a taxation liberalization environment.