Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma visited the investment booth set up by the city government at an exhibition at the Taipei International Convention Center. The exhibition is being held on the sidelines of the Taiwan Business Alliance Conference.
The city government's booth introduces Taipei's business environment and its competitive advantages in the international market. It exhibits 10 planned construction projects for which the city government is hoping to attract local and foreign investors.
"Taipei offers extraordinary advantages in terms of location, rich professional talent and high stan-dards of living compared with other Asian cities," Ma said, adding that foreign investors could be absolutely confident in investing in the city government's projects.
"Shihlin, Nankang and Neihu districts are about to develop respectively a knowledge-based economic park, a high-tech industrial park and a science-based software park, which we believe will have the excellent potential to position Taipei at the forefront of the world economy," Ma said.
He also urged the central government to adjust its direct cross-strait transportation policy quickly to make it more convenient for foreign investors to operate here.
The city government is planning 10 investment projects to improve the city's transportation, business, culture and sports life, including the building of six MRT lines, a sports dome, the development of the site of the old Taipei City Coun-cil building, a Taipei arts center and a Peitou-to-Yangmingshan cable car.
Because of the difficulties of financing the projects, the city government hopes to reach its goals using the build-operate-transfer model, said Taipei City Bureau of Finance Director Lee Sush-der (
The investment-promotion conference has attracted nearly 2,000 investors from 35 countries, bringing in about NT$400 billion, according to the Cabinet's statistics.