Hon Hai gets initial nod for Tucheng investment

The Taipei County Government yesterday gave preliminarily approval to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the nation's biggest maker of computer parts, to invest in Tucheng Dingpu High-tech Park (頂埔高科技園區), an official said.

"A total of 11 companies, including Hon Hai, passed the first-round qualification review this morning," Tsai Li-jiuan (蔡麗娟), director of the county government's Construction Bureau, told the Taipei Times yesterday.

The companies will brief the bureau about their investment plans on April 21, Tsai said.

"We will decide no later than April 25 on which seven companies are going to win out," Tsai said.

The county government recently formed a 17-member review committee to oversee the project.

The group will give priority rights for the 7.25-hectare parcel to high-tech firms in the semiconductor, optoelectronics, biotechnology and computer peripherals industries, Tsai said.

The county government will offer incentives for up to eight years, including three years' free rent and half-price rent for five years.

"It will save [each company] as much as NT$173 million on rent during the eight-year period," Tsai said.

Hon Hai -- which makes the PlayStation 2 game consoles for Sony, mobile phones for Nokia and personal computers for Dell -- is planning to set up its global R&D headquarters in Tucheng, Chen Mi-chien (陳彌堅), a deputy manager of the its global R&D division, said yesterday. However, he declined to specify the investment figures.

Chen denied reports that Hon Hai may scale down its planned domestic investment as it may be lured by Shanghai to invest there.

"We intend to keep our roots in Taiwan," he said.

Local media, citing chairman Terry Kuo (郭台銘), reported that the company may spend NT$20 billion to NT$30 billion to establish a global R&D headquarters as well as other upstream and downstream factories in Tucheng.

The company reported last week that its sales last month rose to NT$22.12 billion, up 35 percent from a year ago.

"The company has gained market share at the expense of rivals by implementing cost-down measures with production in China,"said Rebecca Chen (陳月姿), vice president of investment management department at Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise. "Having a R&D headquarters here is a step to offer technical support for its production lines at home and abroad."