The Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Develop-ment (CEPD,
"The statistics showed that, last year, 49.2 percent of the nation's employees worked in the service sector, whose yearly growth rate is 3.8 percent -- a lot higher than the average employment growth rate of 1.2 percent across all professions," CEPD's Vice Chairman Hsieh Fa-dah (謝發達) said.
He was addressing the 4th general assembly of the Taiwan Chain Stores and Franchising Association (
"Taiwan's labor force is gradually shifting toward the service sector," Hsieh said in his keynote speech.
Taiwan is expected to complete negotiations on the service sector with other WTO members in January 2005 before opening up the local market to foreign competition.
WTO accession will help Taiwan attract foreign capital, upgrade local management skills, prompt financial reforms and lower tariffs, Hsieh said.
Outlining the Cabinet's six-year national development project, he said that the government aims to boost four service industries, including R&D, information applications, logistics and tourism.
To create a more business-friendly environment, Hsieh said the government plans to spend NT$569 million before 2004 on improving the service sector's competitiveness and quality.
Hsieh said chain stores generated a production value of NT$1.15 trillion -- 35 percent of the nation's total retail sales -- last year, and that such ventures will become more prevelant in the years to come.
Franchising accounts for over 60 percent of all retail sales in the US and Europe, he said.
Taiwan's 59,000 retailers are involved in 226 different types of business, while there are 550 types of business in Japan's retail sector and 750 types of business in the US retail sector.
"The council will study the business practices of Japanese and American retailers," he said.
Hsieh said he also expects local retailers to branch out internationally, expanding the scale of their business operations.
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