The government of Taiwan is expanding the scope of restrictions on the export of goods to the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in order to meet the increased sanctions introduced by the EU, the USA and Japan.
Taiwan expands restrictions on the export of goods from Russia and Belarus
Taiwan added 77 items to the list of goods whose export to Russia and Belarus is prohibited.
This was announced by the Ministry of Economy of Taiwan, Focus Taiwan reports.
It is noted that the ban will come into effect on March 8. Its purpose will be to prevent the Russian military from using high-tech Taiwanese technologies and products in the war against Ukraine.
In 2023, Taiwan's government imposed export controls on many high-performance machine tools to Russia and Belarus. It expanded the scope of export restrictions to 77 additional products to comply with increased export sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and Japan.
Goods added to the new export control list include:
CNC machine tools;
processing centres;
lathes;
milling and grinding machines.
According to the official, Taiwan's exports of 77 goods to Russia reached $45 million last year, which is 1.47% of Taiwan's total exports to Russia.
The representative of the Ministry of Economy also appealed to Taiwanese manufacturers who export products to countries such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which are considered to have a high risk of product transhipment, not to redirect supplies to Russia and Belarus.
The Russian Federation uses Taiwanese machines
Despite the sanctions, the Russian military industry receives modern machines from Taiwan.
This is stated in a joint investigation by The Insider and the Reporter.
Russia still receives modern metalworking machines from Taiwan, which joined the sanctions against Russia.
As noted, despite the direct ban on the export of such products, Russia can purchase products from third countries. Parallel imports mainly take place through Turkey or China.
From March to September 2023, Russia imported at least 193 processing centers of Taiwanese production with a total value of almost 29 million dollars, according to the investigation.
Parallel imports bring quite high incomes to both intermediaries and manufacturing companies.
For example, a machine tool costing between 60,000 and 180,000 dollars from intermediaries in third countries was sold to the Russian manufacturer of cruise missiles and space equipment, Comet Corporation in Moscow, for 1 million dollars.
Taiwan imposed sanctions against Russia.
Taiwan has decided to strengthen export control of sanctioned goods to Russia.
The Ministry of Economy of Taiwan stated that the country's enterprises are prohibited from exporting all goods of this company, I Machine, from Russia.
The ban is in place to preserve the international reputation of Taiwanese business people for future global sales and to prevent Taiwan's high-tech goods from being used for weapons development in Russia.
The Commerce Department of Taiwan's Ministry of Economy has also significantly increased fines for illegal exports to Russia and Belarus, increasing penalties for the first unlawful export to Russia by more than 15 times, amounting to RMB 1 million ($32,000).
So far, Taiwan has imposed sanctions against 1,900 entities that are, in one way or another, connected to Russia.
