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COA Signs the Letter of Intent with Gotemba City of Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan

2016-07-12

  In order to promote Taiwanese fruits consumed by Japanese schoolchildren, Dong-Chong Hsiou, Deputy Director General of the Department of International Affairs, Council of Agriculture (COA), and Youhei Wakabayashi, Mayor of Gotemba City of Shizuoka Pre-fecture, signed the letter of intent to strengthen cooperation on cultural and agricultural exchanges between Taiwan and Japan on July 12, 2016. The goal of this event is to promote the export of Taiwan’s agricultural products into the Japanese market by hav-ing Japan’s schoolchildren consume Taiwan’s fruits during lunch.

   The COA has always been committed to boosting the agricul-tural exports, particularly for the high-end Japanese market. In this regard, the COA not only has focused on the exports of man-gos, frozen vegetable soybeans, flowers and so on, but also took actions for increasing banana exports to Japan. Frank Hsieh, Tai-wan’s newly appointed representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan (TECO-Japan), attached great importance to this event and visited the school in person. Through the efforts of TECO-Japan this year, Gotemba City of Shi-zuoka Prefecture purchased Taiwanese bananas as the fruit of school lunch on June 9 and July 6 this year, and it was highly praised and appreciated by the schoolchildren.

   Mayor Wakabayashi said that the Gotemba City will contin-ue to serve Taiwanese bananas for schoolchildren and hopefully deepen children’s understanding of Taiwanese culture and agri-culture. In the meantime, the COA will introduce more Taiwanese agricultural products for Japan’s school lunch and other new marketing channels, with an aim at increasing Taiwanese agricul-tural exports to Japan.