Major business councils from Taiwan and Singapore met in the city-state Monday at an annual conference that was being held for the first time since 2004. The Singapore Business Federation (SBF) , the conference's host, kept the event low profile by blocking the media from the entire proceedings except for the opening speeches delivered by the heads of the two councils. The meeting between the SBF and the Taipei-based Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association (CIECA) , the 10th of its kind, brought together about 100 business leaders, including 17 Taiwan-based executives and 40 Taiwanese businessmen based in Singapore. Peter Seah, chairman of DBS Group Holdings and DBS Bank, who served as head of the Singapore delegation, said he appreciated the efforts made by Taiwan's representative office in Singapore to help resume the annual meeting that had been suspended for five years. He described the SBF-CIECA conference as a mechanism helping consolidate business exchanges between the two countries and a platform on which businesses could cooperate more closely, including the possibility of Singapore and Taiwan joining together to crack open other markets in third countries. For his part, Douglas Hsu, chairman of the Taiwan-based Far Eastern Group and chairman of the CIECA's Singapore Committee, said in his address that two-way trade between Taiwan and Singapore has rebounded from the 2008 global financial meltdown. Trade between Taiwan and Singapore was expected to grow even further after Taiwan concluded a free trade agreement-like economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China in June this year, Hsu said. Topping the agenda was a keynote speech delivered by the Singaporean delegation on the trade agreement between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN Plus One, and a keynote speech delivered by the Taiwanese delegation on the ECFA and its impact. The two sides were also expected to exchange views on third market opportunities, logistics and renewable energy. 