Beijing Wednesday agreed to consider a proposed plan to operate freight charter flights across the Taiwan Straits in a bid to help Taiwanese investors reduce the economic damage caused by SARS.

Li Weiyi, spokesman with the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said the mainland is willing to facilitate any move that benefits business circles on the island, as well as cross-Straits economic exchanges.

The scheme to launch charter cargo flights was recently proposed by some Taiwanese "legislators'' as strict quarantine measures on both sides of the Straits have hindered logistics flow for an increasing number of Taiwanese-funded enterprises on the mainland.

The plan was aimed at improving the supply of goods for these firms by shortening delivery times.

Due to Taipei's decades-old ban on the three direct links -- trade, transport and postal services -- across the Straits, delivery of goods, whether by air or sea freight, have to be made via a third destination, usually Hong Kong and Macao.

Li hinted that the mainland will adopt concrete measures to ensure the proposed programme can be smoothly put in place.

"We suggest that non-governmental industrial associations and airlines on both sides of the Straits should first communicate with each other and reach agreement on related issues,'' the spokesman told a regular press conference.

If implemented, the charter freight flight programme would signal another landmark move in cross-Straits relations, following the successful operation of the first charter passenger flights between Taiwan and the mainland during this year's Spring Festival holidays.

Between January 26 and February 10, six Taiwanese airlines operated a total of 16 indirect charter flights to and from the mainland for the first time in 54 years, although they were required to make a brief stopover in Hong Kong or Macao.

At the press briefing, Li also said the SARS outbreak had had a limited impact on cross-Straits economic and trade ties, especially Taiwanese investment on the mainland.

Citing statistics from Taiwan's economic administrators, Li said Taiwanese investors injected a total of US$1.417 billion into the mainland in the first four months of this year, a year-on-year jump of 73.62 per cent.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese investment on the mainland in April alone rose by 22.5 per cent year on year.

Li stressed that the economic fallout of SARS is short-term and the mainland economy will sustain a fast, healthy and stable development in the long term.

"So we believe that Taiwanese investors will not weaken their confidence in investing in the mainland and their investments will gain a momentum as long as the disease outbreak is brought under control,'' he told reporters.

Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce suggested that cross-Straits trade volume increased by 39 per cent to reach US$12.12 billion in the first quarter of this year.

By the end of March, the mainland had attracted Taiwanese investment of about US$34 billion in more than 56,000 projects.

(China Daily May 29, 2003)