JEDDAH, 10 September 2006 — Taiwan is considering effective measures to reduce its bilateral trade deficit. “With oil prices continuing to rise, our trade balance that remains in favor of Saudi Arabia is expected to widen further,” Reyming Tu, deputy executive director, planning and finance department, Taipei External Trade Development Council, said yesterday.
“Aside from boosting bilateral trade, we’re keen to explore investment opportunities across the Kingdom and the Middle East, “Tu, who is leading a 28-member trade and investment mission from Taiwan representing 22 major companies, told Arab News on the sidelines of a Taiwan trade and investment mission road show at Le Jeddah Meridien.
The delegation had a meeting with the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry earlier in the day and interacted with its Chairman Saleh Ali Al-Turki, Secretary General Mohammed A. Al-Sharif, Deputy Secretary General Soud O. Ounallah, and Abdulghani Mahmoud Sabbagh and Madawi Abdullah Al-Hassan, both board members.
“We had a fruitful discussion with all of them and they evinced keen interest in Taiwan and its high quality products and services,” said Tu who was accompanied by Yan Hsing Yin, director of economic division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Riyadh.
A number of local businessmen took part in the road show where Taiwan’s 22 companies put up stands to showcase their products and services.
The bilateral trade volume stood at $7.9 billion last year, with Taiwan’s import of oil from the Kingdom amounting to $7.5 billion. “Our exports to the Kingdom have been just about $490 million, mainly car spare parts, PC and telecom parts and accessories, aside from textiles, furniture, education stationery, gift items and sports goods,” Tu said, adding that the 2005 trade volume marked a 25 percent increase over the previous year.
Explaining the purpose of the visit, Tu said the delegation, which earlier visited Dubai and leaves for Turkey today, was keen to find trade partners for its new products that include special equipment for air cleaning for hospitals, food processing and machinery. “Information technology is our forte and this is one other sector that we’re focusing on,” he added.
“We’re very strict with protecting intellectual property rights and no one could point a finger at us for violating them. We’re very much aware that any violation of such rights could have an adverse impact on our exports,” Tu said. He described the Kingdom as Taiwan’s biggest trade partner in the Middle East.
Mohammed Ali Al-Attas, general manager at Alattas, which deals in automobile spare parts, said he had been importing parts from Taiwan for the last 12 years “and not once I had any complaint about the quality of imports.”
Mohammed A. Ba-Mousa Al-Amoudi of Al-Amoudi Trading recalled the days when he imported raw materials for ‘oud’ (wood perfume) from Taiwan and said that they were of “excellent quality.”
Yin explained that those days Taiwan imported wood for oud from Indonesia and Malaysia and processed them before exporting them to the Kingdom and other overseas destinations.