The business environment in Taiwan was rated the sixth best among the 50 countries evaluated by the US-based Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI), the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The latest issue of BERI’s four-monthly business risk assessment report continued to give Taiwan’s business environment the highest-level “1A” rating, classifying Taiwan as a low-risk country for investment, the ministry said in a statement.
Worldwide, Taiwan’s overall ranking was lower only than that of Switzerland, Singapore, the Netherlands, Japan and Norway.
Taiwan was rated third in Asia after Singapore and Japan, and was ahead of China, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, India, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Among the three sub-indices used for the evaluation, Taiwan made the greatest progress in terms of its political risk index, mainly because of the completion of the legislative and presidential elections.
Taiwan’s political risk was rated by BERI as the 11th-lowest worldwide, up four notches from the previous evaluation conducted late last year. The ranking was behind only Singapore in Asia, the ministry said.
The operations risk in Taiwan was rated the third-lowest worldwide after Switzerland and Singapore, while the country’s remittance and repatriation factor ranked fifth worldwide and third in Asia after Japan and Singapore, according to the ministry.
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day