Taiwan Advances in WEF Global Enabling Trade Index

The Switzerland-based World Economic Forum released the Global Enabling Trade Report 2014 on April 1, which ranks Taiwan the 24th out of the 138 economies in the overall enabling trade index, a leap from the 29th place in the 2012 report.  In Asia’s economies, Taiwan finishes 6th, after Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia but ahead of South Korea and China.  As for the performance of other economies, Singapore remains on top and Hong Kong is the second.  South Korea ranks No. 30, while Japan climbs from No. 18 to No. 13.

In the four sub-indexes of the core “enabling trade” index of the report, Taiwan makes great improvements in “border administration”, “infrastructure”, and “operating environment.  In the “border administration” sub-index, Taiwan jumps 13 places to the 18th.  The rise in this ranking is mainly attributable to Taiwan’s topping the indicator of “customs transparency” and coming in 20th in “customs service” and also to Taiwan government’s launch of the “Customs-Port-Trade (CPT) Single Window System” in August 2013.  Besides, Taiwan scales 4 places both in “infrastructure” and “operating environment” to the 15th and the 18th ,respectively, but however, falls to the 121st in “market access”, surprisingly down 20 places.  The foregoing improvements are offset by the heavy drop in “market access”, which is a result of Taiwan’s facing higher weighted average tariff rate and higher margin preference in destination markets than other economies.  The weighted average tariff rate of Taiwan’s exports currently stands at 6%, and therefore, these tariff barriers cause Taiwan to rank 134th and 136th, respectively in margin preference in destination markets and tariffs faced.  These rankings highlight the slow pace of Taiwan’s participation in regional economic integration that results in inferior conditions faced with by local firms for overseas market expansion.  (April 2014)