TAIPEI: Economic Affairs Minister John Deng said Wednesday that Taiwan’s exports of finished products to five emerging markets have been significantly boosted by a trade promotion project conceived by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The significant growth is the result of the ministry’s Project to Promote Most-Valued Products in Emerging Markets, aimed at providing good quality goods at affordable prices to emerging markets, Deng said at an emerging market forum held by the ministry’s Bureau of Foreign Trade.
Under the project, Taiwan’s exports of finished products to the five emerging markets — Indonesia, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and China — more than doubled to US$9.6 billion in 2014 from US$4.53 billion in 2009, according to Deng.
The pace of growth was faster than that of Taiwan’s overall exports, which grew 54 percent over the same period. In the first 10 months of this year, Taiwan’s finished goods exports to the five markets totaled US$7.9 billion, Deng said.
The MOEA project, which was launched in 2010, targeted the five countries as the five emerging markets with the greatest appetite to buy.
It has coordinated the resources of related government agencies both in terms of research and development and marketing to help Taiwanese exporters make inroads into the five markets, and their share of finished-product imports of those markets has climbed to 9.9 percent in 2015 from 6.8 percent in 2009, Deng said.
The project, Deng said, had successfully introduced quality Taiwan-made products to these emerging markets, and the ministry hoped that Taiwan’s shipments to these Asian countries will grow further.
At the forum, attendants shared information about the five emerging markets and presented their strategies on product innovation and distribution in these growing marketplaces.
Deng said the middle class in these emerging markets has strong spending power, which is why the ministry’s project has particularly targeted middle class consumers. He added that the government is determined to speed up the pace of signing free trade agreements with foreign countries in a bid to raise Taiwanese exporters’ competitiveness in the global market.
