Taiwan to Cooperate With Japan on Online Trading System

Taipei, Oct. 17, 2005 (CENS)--Taiwan will move to cooperate with Japan to set up an online alternative dispute resolution (ADR) platform, develop e-commerce environment, and establish an online trading security mechanism, according to informed sources.

The sources said Taiwan will raise relevant cooperation proposals at an e-business conference to be held both sides at the end of this year.

Economics Minister Ho Mei-yueh recently met with some ranking officials at Interchange Association (Japan), Taipei Office to discuss the possible cooperation of Internet operations between Taiwan and Japan. Ho asked if they could send some Internet experts to Taiwan to help the island set up Internet operating and trading security system.

The statistics compiled by Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) indicated that Taiwan's B2C online shopping reached NT$34.72 billion (US$1.02 billion at US$1 = NT$34) in 2004, and is expected to jump by 42% to NT$49.31 billion (US$1.45 billion) this year. Actually the value accounted for merely 1.2% of the total retailing market on the island, which is much lower than the corresponding percentage of 6% in the U.S.

Insiders believed that there should be much more room for Taiwan to develop B2C e-commerce since the island has already had a huge Internet population of more than 9.25 million persons. Du Tzu-chun, director general at Commerce Department of MOEA, pointed out that one of the government's most important tasks for the promotion of e-commerce is to establish reliable operating mechanism for online trading.

To provide online users a secure and quick trading system, MOEA has recently entrusted Security Online Shopping Association (SOSA) to set up standards for screening reliable traders and mark them with certificates. Besides, the trial run of online ADR is slated for completion by the end of this month.