The opening ceremony of the TaiwanICDF’s 2012 Conference for TaiwanICDF Mission Leaders and Project Managers in Latin America and the Caribbean took place in Haiti on January 4. The event was chaired by TaiwanICDF Secretary General Tao Wen-lung, who was accompanied by a panel of six colleagues, in addition to Mr. Franklin F. Y. Chen, Director on Home Assignment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Economic and Trade Affairs, and Mr. Liu Lu-hung, Secretary on Home Assignment at the ministry’s Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs. Twenty TaiwanICDF mission leaders and project managers working throughout Latin America and the Caribbean were also in attendance.

Haiti’s Minister of Agriculture, Hébert Docteur, and Taiwan’s ambassador to Haiti, H.E. Liu Bang-zyh, were also invited to take part in the ceremony. During his welcoming remarks, Secretary General Tao observed that Taiwan and Haiti had been engaged in bilateral technical cooperation for over half a century, and said that efforts toward agricultural cooperation over this period had shown a remarkable performance. Secretary General Tao also pointed out that in addition to taking part in brainstorming sessions, he hoped that conference attendees would be able to establish benchmarks for technical cooperation by observing the methodologies and performance of the Taiwan Technical Mission in Haiti.

Following on from Secretary General Tao’s comments, Minister Docteur said he was honored that Haiti had been selected as the venue for this year’s conference and thanked H.E. Ambassador Liu for Taiwan’s provision of long-term assistance toward agricultural development in the country. He also went on to acknowledge Hsiang Shui-sung, mission leader of the Taiwan Technical Mission in Haiti, whose efforts, he said, had been borne out by the results of fruitful cooperation at a local level.

Director Chen used his platform to encourage Taiwan’s overseas technicians to take a pragmatic approach to the challenges they face, saying that difficulties encountered during the process of implementing reforms to technical cooperation could be met with positive solutions. He also told mission leaders and project managers that by observing one another and brainstorming during the course of the conference, they would be able to seek a common means of developing technical cooperation in the future.

The focus of brainstorming sessions during the six-day conference will include the practices and transference of technical cooperation projects at Taiwan Technical Missions, factors involved in the formation of new projects and regional development priorities. Participants will also make a site visit to observe the Torbeck Rice Production and Marketing Project.

The TaiwanICDF has been implementing a series of reforms to technical cooperation operations and its Taiwan Technical Missions since 2010, gradually introducing project management concepts and a project manager system. The organization will continue to follow trends in foreign assistance in the future, and promote its foreign aid programs in the spirit of the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Taiwanese government’s White Paper on Foreign Aid Policy.

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• Update: 2018/03/01
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