The nation needs to make radical changes to its business environment or risk losing out to Hong Kong as a regional transport hub, experts said yesterday.
"There are a few disadvantages to locating a regional hub in Taiwan," said Andrea Wu (吳王小珍), co-chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei's transportation committee.
"You cannot find high-quality English-speaking staff, connections to the world are a little more difficult without direct links to China and the financial system is not as advanced as Hong Kong," she said.
The lack of direct links between Taiwan and China tops the list of complaints raised by transportation companies. The first flights for over 50 years between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were laid on earlier this year to bring Taiwanese businesspeople working in China back home for the Lunar New Year holidays. Those flights had to make a stopover in Hong Kong.
Another problem is that the country often does not conform to international standards in business practice, Wu said. Regulations force airlines to pay compensation for late baggage delivery even when delays are caused by acts of God such as bad weather conditions, for example. International rules exempt companies from compensation payments when delays are beyond their control.
Officials at international express delivery firm FedEx Express Corp said that due to its geographical location, infrastructure and skilled workforce, Taiwan has the potential to be a global or regional headquarters.
"Such an environment would include making Taiwan's international airports and harbors free-trade ports, establishing innovative procedures for commodity inspections, helping logistics operators establish international logistics centers and nourishing the training of logistic personnel," said Eddy Chan, FedEx vice president for China and the mid-Pacific region, and Jimmy Chen (陳信孝), managing director of FedEx Taiwan, in a joint e-mail statement to the Taipei Times.
FedEx has its regional headquarters in Hong Kong.
The comments come as FedEx celebrated the first anniversary of the opening of a trans-shipment center at CKS International Airport.
At an event to mark the occasion on Wednesday the company extended its cut-off time for package collections from 5pm to 7pm for Taipei customers. FedEx operates 56 flights into and out of the center each week.
DHL Worldwide Express is another express delivery company that has shied away from locating its regional headquarters in Taiwan. The company has six "strategic parts centers" in the country, but its logistics centers are located in Hong Kong and Singapore.
A spokeswoman would not say yesterday why DHL did not use Taiwan as a logistics center. DHL employs 1,000 people here and uses 250 commercial flights every week to deliver its packages.
Taiwan does have a fan in United Parcel Service (UPS) Inc, which made the nation its trans-pacific regional hub in the 1980s.
"Geographically Taiwan is ideal," UPS Taiwan's managing director Benjamin Choi said yesterday.
"It is near most Asian cities and CKS airport is hardly ever closed due to weather problems. There is also a lot of talent here," he said.
UPS operates 70 flights in and out of the country every week and employs 630 people nationwide.
Another expert agreed.
"Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are both well-located in the Asia-Pacific region with a high frequency of services," said Jeroen Rozendahl, co-chair of the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei's logistics committee.
"Taiwan has a more competitive cost base, and a higher capacity as more land is available than in Hong Kong," he said.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure