Mayor promotes Taipei's financial environment

Taipei Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) touted Taipei's investment environment in a speech delivered at a forum yesterday.

Ma that in addition to Taipei's Neihu and Nankang technology parks, which have already become science and technology strongholds, the Taipei City Government is planning to develop similar "silicon valleys" in the Guantu and Peitou districts located in the city's northwestern suburbs.

Once the proposed science parks are developed in Guantu and Peitou, more domestic and foreign corporations, particularly in the fields of electronics, biotechnology and digital technology manufacturing, will make Taipei their business operations centers, Ma said.

He made the remarks in a speech to the Taiwan Forum hosted by the Hong Kong-based magazine Asiamoney.

Ma that although Taipei City Hall is a local-level government, it has ample room to help the private trade and industrial sectors to develop their businesses in the city.

The city government has been facilitating urban development for the science parks, streamlining traffic systems, improving public order and upgrading restaurants and related services, Ma said.

Taipei potentially capable of housing international business operations centers as it is Taiwan's financial center, with 82 percent of the country's financial institutions headquartered in Taipei, along with the head offices of 20 percent of the foreign firms based in Taiwan and nearly 80 percent of the nation's service industry, he said.

In addition, the city has an international-standard world trade center and a science park in Neihu, the output of which is in the trillions of new Taiwan dollars -- an amount that even surpasses that of Taiwan's flagship Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park.

With the output of the Nankang Software Park hitting NT$140 billion (US$4.1 billion) last year, Ma said Taipei has actually already become a global business hub of the information industry.

He said that five of the 15 information industry giants in Taiwan that made US Business Weekly's list of the world's top 100 information industry companies are headquartered in Taipei, with three of them in the Neihu Technology Park.

In order to make Taipei a city more friendly to foreigners, Ma said, the city government has gone the extra mile to take good care of foreigners who live in Taipei, offer them a pleasant living environment and provide their children with an education program compatible with those of their home countries.

He added that Taipei has the largest number of colleges and universities in Taiwan, ready to provide skilled workers and high-caliber human resources to the private industrial and business sectors.