Four harbors around the country meet the conditions for becoming free-trade harbor zones, Ministry of Transportation and Communications officials said yesterday.
The officials were referring to the harbors at Kaohsiung, Taichung, Keelung and Hualien.
The legislature will convene for a special three-day session today to discuss six financial bills -- including the free-trade harbor legislation -- that the ruling DPP says are crucial to the nation's economic development.
The officials said Kaohsiung Harbor, which is located at a hub of international sea lanes, has an excellent harbor. Almost every major shipping company in the world has a container wharf in Kaohsiung and it is a major harbor in the Asia-Pacific region. It also has an industrial area and an export processing zone.
Taichung Harbor has deep water and a large on-shore area that can be put to various uses. Although Taichung Harbor is designed as an export processing zone, few manufacturers have been persuaded to set up there.
But the officials were confident that if it were transformed into a free trade-harbor zone, it would be more efficiently used, according to the officials.
Keelung Harbor is located on the major sea lanes between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. If container vessels can use Keelung as a transshipment harbor, it would be superior even to Hong Kong, the officials said.
Keelung would be suitable as a free-trade harbor zone and transshipment harbor for the Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australian sea lanes.
The officials also said that the ministry has plans to combine Hualien Harbor in eastern Taiwan with the neighboring Meilun Industrial Zone or the Hualien-based Taiwan Fertilizer Company to form a free-trade harbor zone. Hualien has lower land and manpower costs, they said.
Meanwhile, Kaohsiung Harbor is planning to promote a second container center to improve its commodity distribution and container-handling ability.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
Prosecutors today declined to say who was questioned regarding alleged forgery on petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, after Chinese-language media earlier reported that members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League were brought in for questioning. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau confirmed that two people had been questioned, but did not disclose any further information about the ongoing investigation. KMT Youth League members Lee Hsiao-liang (李孝亮) and Liu Szu-yin (劉思吟) — who are leading the effort to recall DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) — both posted on Facebook saying: “I
A court has approved Kaohsiung prosecutors’ request that two people working for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Dai-hua (林岱樺) be detained, as a probe into two cases allegedly involving her continues. The request was made on Friday, after prosecutors raided Lin’s two offices and the staffers’ residences, and questioned five on suspicion of contravening the Anti-Corruption Act (貪汙治罪條例). The people included the directors of Lin’s Daliao (大寮) and Linyuan (林園) district offices in Kaohsiung, surnamed Chou (周) and Lin (林) respectively, as well as three other staffers. The prosecutors’ move came after they interrogated Lin Dai-hua on Wednesday. She appeared solemn following
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 today amid outcry over his decision to wear a Nazi armband to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case last night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and covering the book with his coat. Lee said today that this is a serious
RSS