Council of Agriculture said promoting international markets for Taiwan ’s agricultural products is the key to upgrade Taiwan ’s agricultural industry’s competitiveness. In recent years, under the financial support of COA, many international promotion activities have been hold in many niche countries. As a result, significant achievements have been reached. Last year, the total export value of the Taiwan ’s agricultural products reached 34.4 billion US dollars, an annual growth rate of 4.1%. While carrying out the promotion activities overseas, COA learned from developed countries experiences such as Japan , to assist the local governments to do the oversea market promotion activity to promote their locally produced special products themselves. In this way, the results achieved are better than the traditional promotion ways.

COA also pointed out that in order to assist local governments to promote their safe, high quality and localized special farm products to the international markets, in the year of 2007 COA enacted “the Guidelines for Subsidizing the Local Governments to Conduct the Farm Products Promotion Projects at Oversea Market.” Any local government which wishes to do the foreign markets promotion activity can summit their application proposal to the COA for approval. COA invites experienced promotion specialists and scholars to objectively review and subsidize these good projects based on the enacted Guidelines. Last year ,under the COA assistance, Hwalien county government successfully established the Canadian marketing channels for their 60 products, including Wendan Pomelo, high quality rice, red-tea with honey flavor etc.,. For both Pingtung and Tainan counties, the promotion target product is Irwin mango, it attracted a lot of Japanese consumers because of it’s traceable information labeled with each one of the fruit which fully ensure the safety of the product. Taipei county’s Baochung tea also promoted and exported to the China market. Taichung county’s oranges, pear as well as Miaoli county’s grapes, oranges and star fruits have been successfully promoted and accepted by the consumers of Hong-Kong , Brunei Darussalam and Singapore consumers. In addition, Yunlin county’s peanuts, vanilla vinegar and Kaohsiung ’s county’s tropical fruits and processed products also been promoted to the markets of Osaka and Sendai of Japan.

COA further explained that in order to continuously assist the local governments to promote their products at the foreign markets, this year already selected 8 counties, through the guidelines due process to subsidize them to conduct the oversea promotion activities, which include Taipei county, Taoyuan county, Taichung county, Yunlin county, Tainan county, Kaohsiung county, Pingtung county and Hwalien county. The 8 counties have selected their products as well as target markets for promotion works respectively. The main markets targeted under these projects include Japan , Korea , Mainland China , Singapore , Malaysia as well as Vietnam . For example, Tainan county’s promotion activity will be held in Japan and the main promotion product is Irwin mango which is welcomed by Japanese consumers when promoted last year there and Kaoshiung county’s promoted products including papaya, banana, mango and some other their local-produced tropical products, the target market will be focus on Japan too. The Pingtung county’s main promotion products are mango, pineapple, banana and lichees, products produced in the county, The target market is Korea . This is the first time to promote these tropical products in that country. Yunlin county selected the county’s produced products which includes vegetables, flowers as well as fruits to promote in Mainland China ’s market. For Taichung county, pongan( a special variety of orange ) will be the main promotion product and the target markets are Singapore , Malaysia and Vietnam . The tea, ocidium and bamboo shoot which produced in Taoyuan county will be introduced to the Japanese market . Baochung tea, which produced in Taipei county will be promoted to the Mainland China’s market, and it’s pork and bamboo shoot will be introduced to the Singapore market.

COA also explained that assisting local governments to promote their local-produced special products overseas program mainly based on it’s “ Promote Globally” policy objective. Only in this way, Taiwan ’s farmers and exporters can gain the benefits of their hard labor work, improve Taiwan ’s quality farm product international reputation as well as make the farmers pay much attention to the products’ quality and safety to comply with the international market requirement.