Taipei, July 16 (CNA) Former Grand Justice Lo Chang-fa has been appointed as Taiwan's representative to the World Trade Organization, to fill a post that has been vacant since last September, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Thursday.

The position of Taiwan representative to the WTO, the only major international organization in which the country has full membership, had been vacant since September 2019, when Cyrus Chu resigned for unspecified reasons.

The newly appointed representative is a former grand justice and an expert specializing in international trade law and policies, with research expertise in areas such as international economic law, trade law, and legal issues arising from WTO dispute settlement proceedings, according to MOFA.

Lo was appointed twice as a member of the WTO's permanent groups of experts -- on its Dispute Settlement Body in 2006 and its Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures in 2008, MOFA said.

Meanwhile, Chang Hsiao-yueh, former chairwoman of the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, has been named as Taiwan's new representative to Austria, replacing Vanessa Shih, who will return home to serve as head of MOFA's Institute of Diplomacy and International Affairs, according to the ministry.