Ranking Officials Spearheading Campaign for Investment in Taiwan

The government campaign for drumming up foreign investments in Taiwan has started in earnest, as Christina Liu, minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development CEPD and Shih Yen-shiang, economics minister, will soon lead investment-solicitation delegations to visit the U.S., Japan, Indonesia, and Europe.

Shih is scheduled to lead a trade and investment delegation, consisting of some 100 officials, scholars, and industrial representatives, to visit Indonesia this Wednesday, which will be followed by visits by ranking economic officials to Europe, also for pushing investments in Taiwan.

On the other hand, Christina Liu and her delegation will visit Japan in the second half of October, before extending their trip to Singapore, Hong Kong, Europe, and U.S.

Liu pointed out that the delegation will focus on different industries in soliciting foreign investments at different stops, such as innovative culture, digital contents, biotech, and international medicine in Japan and green energy and smart green building in the U.S. In principle, the CEPD will encourage foreign investments in the 10 major target sectors for foreign investments, including Taoyuan aviation park, international biotech, and medicine.

In contrast, the delegations of the Ministry of Economic Affairs MOEA will zero in on the 10 emerging industries, four smart industries, and 10 service industries, with special effort aiming to introduce foreign enterprises which can fill the vacuum in the local industrial chain, such as LED equipment manufacturing, a key missing part in the established LED supply chain on the island.

The Executive Yuan the Cabinet has designated 2010 as the year for global investment solicitation, with the CEPD responsible for the planning work for the initiative and the MOEA in charge of execution.

In fact, both units have been pushing the campaign side by side. The CEPD, for instance, has held five investment-solicitation conferences in Taiwan, when 42 enterprises unveiled their domestic investment projects, totaling NT$150 billion in scale, while the MOEA organized the 2010 Taiwan Business Alliance Conference in September, when 27 multinationals reported their investment projects in Taiwan, totaling NT$108.3 billion in scale.