Ministry Statements & Speeches:
We join others in welcoming Vice Minister Mei-Hua Wang and all those others that have travelled from Taipei, as well as our Geneva based colleagues.
I would like to thank Chinese Taipei and the Secretariat for the TPR reports which provide a comprehensive outline of Chinese Taipei’s trade policy, and I would like to thank discussant Ambassador Vanheukelen for his comprehensive and insightful remarks this morning. Chinese Taipei is a significant Asia-Pacific economy, and is an important economic partner for New Zealand. Two-way trade is substantial, and is underpinned by the Agreement between New Zealand and the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu on Economic Cooperation or ‘ANZTEC’, which entered into force in December 2013. Since ANZTEC entered into force two way goods and trade has increased by over 20%. Chinese Taipei is now our 12th largest trading partner with two way trade exceeding two billion dollars.
We appreciate that Chinese Taipei shares New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rules-based multilateral trading system, which we see as essential to our collective future prosperity. New Zealand and Chinese Taipei enjoy close collaboration across a range of WTO work streams. Chinese Taipei’s commitment across the WTO system is evidenced by its ratification of the Trade Facilitation Agreement in 2015, as well as its active participation in the Information Technology Agreement II, the Government Procurement Agreement, and the Environmental Goods Agreement negotiations, to mention a few.
Chinese Taipei continues to demonstrate this commitment by participating in several joint statement processes to come out of MC11, including on trade and women’s economic empowerment, services domestic regulation, e-commerce and MSMEs.
New Zealand emphasizes the importance of transparency in the WTO, and therefore in up to date notifications. Accordingly, we commend Chinese Taipei on its notification record in many areas, but encourage bringing all notifications up to date, including in the area of agricultural domestic support, which I note Chinese Taipei has indicated it will provide in the coming months.
New Zealand commends Chinese Taipei for the positive strides it has made during the review period. We have noted the recent advancements Chinese Taipei has made in terms of its trade facilitation and customs clearance mechanisms, which are having a practical impact on the ease of doing business.
In particular, we welcome Chinese Taipei’s initiatives on pursuing trade policy that contributes to environmental protection and sustainable development. New Zealand thanks Chinese Taipei’s for its commitment to advancing Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform at the WTO and its support for the Ministerial statement in Buenos Aires. In the area of fisheries subsidies we encourage Chinese Taipei to continue strengthening its legal framework to implement stronger actions on deterring IUU fishing activities.
New Zealand is a strong supporter of the trade policy review mechanism. These instruments play an essential role in allowing Members to better understand and review the policies and practices of other WTO members. New Zealand appreciates Chinese Taipei’s continued commitment to the multilateral trading system and we welcome the positive steps that Chinese Taipei has taken in the four years since the last trade policy review. We look forward to further discussion this week, including on the issues raised in our questions. We wish Chinese Taipei a successful trade policy review.