Cross-Agency Meetings with NDC

Representatives of six AmCham Taipei committees had the opportunity on August 30 to discuss their key White Paper issues with their regulators at a meeting presided over by Deputy Minister Kung Ming-hsin of the National Development Council (NDC). The four-hour meeting in the NDC conference room was the first in what will be quarterly sessions until the 2018 White Paper is launched next June.

The government suggested holding the series of meetings to facilitate progress on White Paper issues after learning that none of the 80 issues from the 2016 White Paper had been totally resolved.

The committees and their issues were:

• Travel and Tourism, regarding Taiwan’s policy of requiring refunds for canceled hotel reservations, even when customers agreed to non-cancellability as part of special promotional offers.
• Intellectual Property, on proposed revisions to the Copyright Act.
• Retail, concerning problems with mandatory inspection of various imported products in certified domestic laboratories.
• Insurance, on suggested measures to incentivize insurers to offer protection insurance.
• Capital Markets, on proposals to relax existing securities investment rules to permit broader participation.
• Banking, regarding regulatory restrictions on the onshore wealth-management business. The Banking Bureau also agreed to a 2016 White Paper request for “double-hatting”: allowing bank personnel to take charge of bond agency and derivative information and advisory functions concurrently.

August 30, 2017 – The first quarterly meeting with the National Development Council

“The meeting was a great start for the new post-White Paper process, but much still remains in flux,” says AmCham Taipei President Andrea Wu. “We appreciate the Taiwan government’s efforts to actively address our issues, and hope to see early resolution to many of these longstanding challenges.”