Net may help the economy

A local think tank yesterday proposed that the nation promote the use of the Internet to help make up for a computer industry that has reached its peak and may be slowing down.

In a report to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the Institute for Information Industry (資策會) said that the government has not done enough to use the Internet to help the nation shift from being a manufacturing giant to being a major service economy and business operation center in Asia.

"We are well equipped to advance from a top information hardware-producing nation to one of deeper information usage," the group's chief executive, Lin Feng-ching (林逢慶), told Chen.

The publicly funded institute said that the country has yet to fully tap the Internet's potential for e-commerce, bill paying, providing education and assisting in medical care.

Taiwan should also play a key role in providing content to Chinese-language Web sites and digitalizing museum collections, Lin said.

Taiwan's Internet usage still lags behind advanced countries, he said.