In the past few years, as the Republic of China was upgrading its industry, it encountered the worldwide recession, and faced protectionism in its overseas markets. This made the job of planners in industry more difficult. In order to help industry overcome these difficulties, this year Minister of Economic Affairs Chao Yao-tung proclaimed "Economic Activity Year," and established a task force to call on business leaders, and assist them to improve production, management, and other techniques. The service group takes the initiative to visit industry figures, and represents the concern the government has for business.

The Export Service Group is a pioneer of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) program of automating industry. The group consists of persons from a variety of public and private positions concerned with economic matters.

Since its founding in May of this year, the service group has solicited the ideas of industry figures and has toured central and southern Taiwan to hold discussions with businessmen. These discussions were heavily attended and well appreciated by the businessmen.

Moreover, many businessmen took their own initiative in requesting help from the government, and arranged their own conferences. As a result of these factors, the service group had already met with leaders of some 2,500 businesses by August, after only four months of existence.

The service group answers questions about customs regulations, trade administration, and how to obtain bank credit. The businessmen, on their part, suggest changes in government procedures that can help them compete in world markets. These suggestions are communicated to the appropriate agencies by the service group.

One example: telephone manufacturers are required to have their products tested by the Directorate General of Telecommunications before they can be exported. But previously, the only testing facilities were in Taipei, and it was a burden for manufacturers in the Taichung area to travel that far for the test procedure. Now the directorate authorizes its Taichung branch to test products from that area, a new convenience for the manufacturers.

The chief of the service group, Lin Chien-shan, considers both economic theory and the real situation and says, "The biggest factor influencing the country's trading ability is the lack of a trade system; we need to establish an export system."

Lin says such an export system can be considered from the three aspects of price, quantity, and quality. Each factor affects the others. For example, if a product is of good quality, its price can be set accordingly. But if the quantity of production is too great, the price will fall for each unit. If the resulting price per unit does not allow the manufacturer to make a sufficient profit, he will have no means to improve quality in the future.

To deal with these problems, the service group is taking positive steps to establish an export system. The group has already chosen Christmas ornaments, vacuum bottles, umbrellas, and wallets to serve as model products in a program of systematization of exports.

Taiwan produces more Christmas ornaments than any other area of the world, and its export sales in that line last year totalled to US$116 million. But the unit price for most products of this type has been low, and quality needs improving at present. The service group has set up a unit to evaluate the quality of these products; it will give a seal of approval to those products that pass muster.

Thus the current work of the service group consists of a mix of missions aimed at increasing the nation's export strength, augmenting the competitiveness of Taiwan products, and improving the management of export firms. It is providing industry with examples and government with input regarding policy changes.

Its work is helping make "Economic Activity Year" truly active.