Somaliland would officially open a representative office in Taipei early next month, the self-declared east African state’s first representative to Taiwan, Mohamed Omar Hagi Mohamoud, said yesterday.
Preparations are still under way to set up the representative office, but it is expected to start operations on Sept. 9, Mohamoud said.
Working with the representative would be four employees, two who arrived from Somaliland with Mohamoud and two Taiwanese, who have yet to be recruited, he added.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The representative revealed the plan on the sidelines of a seminar held by the Taipei-based Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association on allowing Africa-based Taiwanese businesspeople and African students studying in Taiwan to share their views on exploring trade opportunities on the continent.
It was the first event that Mohamoud has attended since he completed a 14-day quarantine after arriving in Taiwan on Aug. 7.
Mohamoud described relations between Somaliland and Taiwan as “formal,” saying that the proof is February’s agreement signed by their foreign ministers that each would establish a representative office in the other’s country.
High-ranking officials from the two nations participated in a ceremony on Monday last week to mark Taiwan’s opening of its representative office in the Somaliland capital, Hargeisa.
The agreement, designed to pave the way toward greater cooperation, has attracted the ire of China, which considers Taiwan as its territory, and Somalia, which has a similar view of Somaliland.
However, despite Chinese influence and pressure, Mohamoud said that Somaliland’s relationship with Taiwan would remain unaffected.
Somaliland is an independent, sovereign country, Mohamoud said, adding that other countries cannot dictate “with whom we are going to develop relations.”
Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 after a civil war.
Somaliland has set up 22 representative offices, including in Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland and the US, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
FINANCES: The KMT plan to halt pension cuts could bankrupt the pension fund years earlier, undermining intergenerational fairness, a Ministry of Civil Service report said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ proposal to amend the law to halt pension cuts for civil servants, teachers and military personnel could accelerate the depletion of the Public Service Pension Fund by four to five years, a Ministry of Civil Service report said. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on Aug. 14 said that the Act Governing Civil Servants’ Retirement, Discharge and Pensions (公務人員退休資遣撫卹法) should be amended, adding that changes could begin as soon as after Saturday’s recall and referendum. In a written report to the Legislative Yuan, the ministry said that the fund already faces a severe imbalance between revenue
RSS