Taipei, Oct. 14, 2011 (CENS)--China will be able to replace the U.S. as the world’s largest consumer of precision machinery as the nation’s manufacturing industry is just taking off in tandem with the implementation of 12th Five-year Development Plan, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Thanks to the prosperous development of China’s manufacturing industry, the MOEA definitely said Taiwan will see exports of machine tools top US$4 billion this year, edging out Italy as the world’s third-largest exporter of the products.

The MOEA’s Department of Industrial Technology (DOIT) said Taiwan’s exports of machine tools to China doubled to NT$30 billion last year from 2009’s NT$14 billion and the brilliant performance will continue this year. The DOIT attributed the outstanding results to the implementation of the cross-Taiwan Strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA). In addition, both Taiwan and China have become the world’s major production bases for high-tech industries.

DOIT deputy director C.N. Lin noted Taiwan and China have to set up a cooperation platform to unite the production advantages of both sides to clinch their leadership in the world’s precision-machinery manufacturing sector. Lin said Taiwan and China encounter low local content rates in the production of precision machinery.

The DOIT said after the ECFA took effect in January this year, Taiwan and China have seen a closer interaction in the machine-tool sector because of the reduction of custom tariffs.

To enhance the technical exchanges and industrial cooperation across the Taiwan Strait, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI) and China Machinery Industry Federation (CMIF) have recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in this regard.

According to statistics compiled by the CMIF, two-way machinery trade between China and Taiwan amounted to US$12.3 billion in the first eight months of 2011, up 22% year-on-year. Of this, China imported US$8.97 billion worth of machinery from Taiwan and exported US$3.33 billion worth of China-made machinery to Taiwan in the first eight months of this year. In a word, China had a trade deficit of US$5.6 billion against Taiwan in the machinery sector in the first eight months of this year.