萬國法律事務所

To promote and facilitate increased trade, Taiwan’s Board of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced recently that the “Facile Trade (FT) Net” established by private companies with government assistance is currently in the final stage of testing. When this new network is finally put into operation, companies will no longer be required to go through multiple examining units with respect to approvals for customs clearance, export and import permits, inspections, and quarantine cases. Instead, companies will simply need to input their data one time, and the same will be conveyed to all of the different agencies involved. It is expected that this new system will substantially reduce the examination and customs clearance time.

The Board of Foreign Trade recognized and acknowledged that the complexity of Taiwan’s trade procedures and the voluminous documentary requirements pose a significant obstacle in terms of costs on companies engaged in trading. In 2002 the Board of Foreign Trade started to review export and import examination procedures and began revising the relevant laws and regulations. Presently, trade procedures simplification has been discussed for 3,089 different export and import goods and it has been agreed to simplify those procedures for 1,004 items, most of which are export items (943 items) compared to only a small number of 61 import items.