Executives from consultancy firms and industry experts yesterday called for more deregulation and better government coordination to help boost the biotechnology sector.
Audrey Tseng (曾惠瑾), deputy chairwoman of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan, said that the government should lift restrictions on angel investors and facilitate tax exemptions for individual investors in biotechnology start-ups to match standards in Singapore.
Tseng told a forum organized by the government-funded Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (生技醫療產業策進會) that the proposed changes are not aimed at lowering tax obligations, but are to address investors’ concerns about prolonging the time in which tax credits can be claimed.
A precedent for tax credits for individual investors has been set in Singapore, she said, adding that the city-state is Taiwan’s main competitor in the region.
Tseng said that regulations should be eased so that funds can be reinvested in other ventures in the sector following an initial investment in a Taiwanese biotech firm by a foreign investor.
“Taiwan does not have a comprehensive platform for foreign investors to gain FINI [foreign institutional investor] or QIB [qualified institutional buyer] designation from the government,” Tseng said.
She also urged the government to improve English-language information and resources to attract more foreign capital.
Overall communication and promotion could be achieved by holding more roadshows abroad for Taiwan’s “blue chip” biotechnology companies, Tseng said.
Taipei Veterans General Hospital physician Chen Tsen-wen (陳振文) said that the government should take the lead to help companies meet compliance standards in overseas markets as they expand, especially within the scope of the “new southbound policy.”
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
RSS