Taiwan's inward foreign direct investment (FDI) amounted to a record high of US$7.42 billion last year, ranking sixth in South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia, according to the World Investment Report 2007 released on Tuesday.
Taiwan ranked behind only China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Thailand in the region in terms of inward forward direct investment, according to the annual report, which was published by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Inward foreign direct investment last year increased 356 percent over 2005's figure of US$1.62 billion and 291 percent over 2004's figure of US$1.89 billion.
Outward foreign direct investment totaled US$7.39 billion last year, ranking the country fifth in the region behind Hong Kong, China, India and Singapore.
The amount marked an increase of 22.74 percent over the figure of US$6.02 billion for 2005 and a 3.56 percent increase from US$7.14 billion in 2004.
Last year the total FDI inflows to South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia amounted to a record high of US$200 billion, marking an increase of 19 percent over 2005.
The report shows that Taiwan ranked 119th in the world in terms of the Inward FDI Performance Index for last year, while the country ranked 20th in terms of its Inward FDI Potential Index for 2005 -- the most recent year for which data is available.
Based on these results, Taiwan was placed in the category of "below potential" countries, those that have high FDI potential but low FDI performance.
The Inward FDI Performance Index ranks countries according to the ratio of a country's share of global FDI inflows to its share of global GDP.
The Inward FDI Potential Index is an average of the values of 12 variables expected to affect an economy's attractiveness to foreign investors.
A senior UNCTAD economist told the Central News Agency that "below potential" countries tend to be less dependent on FDI inflows in pursuing their development goals.
For example, the US saw its Inward FDI Performance Index ranking somewhere around 120th for three consecutive years to last year, although it maintained its top position in terms of its Inward FDI Potential Index for 2004 and 2005, the economist said.
He noted that Taiwan's Outward FDI Performance Index ranked 27th, 27th and 26th, respectively, for the three years between 2004 to last year, which may indicate that Taiwan and its businesses tend to rely on outward FDI to enhance their international competitiveness.
Similarly, France ranked 87th, 78th and 74th respectively, for the same three years, while the country's Outward FDI Performance Index ranked 19th, 16th and 17th over those years, he said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS