JEDDAH: Taiwan said yesterday that it was concerned about the huge bilateral trade gap and was considering new moves to narrow it. “We are keen on expanding our exports to Saudi Arabia,” David Wang, chief secretary of the Taipei-based Bureau of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, told Arab News on the sidelines of a business session of the 2009 Taiwan trade mission at Le Meridien Jeddah yesterday.
“Trade between Saudi Arabia and Taiwan totals $16 billion, but it has remained largely in favor of the Kingdom as our exports are only $1 billion and imports $15 billion. So our effort is to bridge this yawning gap as much as possible, which is one of the objectives of the current mission,” Wang added. In fact the Taiwanese companies are at the forefront of technological innovations in a wide specter of industries and are keen to expand their distribution network with new partners, he said.
Wang said the world financial crisis had taken its toll on Taiwan whose world trade dropped by 30 to 40 percent in the first four months of 2009 compared to the same period last year. “Our GDP has also gone down by three percent,” he added. The current mission, which represents a wide range of products and services including solar panels and construction materials, expects to strike a $30 million new business in Jeddah. The mission earlier visited Iran and Riyadh where it received orders worth $13 million, he said, adding that the Kingdom has much more potential for Taiwanese products.
