Celebrating Merchants' Day yesterday, the 56th Golden Merchant Award (金商獎), organized by the the General Chamber of Commerce (GCC, 商總), honored 21 well-performing business leaders and business groups of the year.
"Despite the economic downturn, [yesterday's 11] local winners have made a good showing on business sales and tax payments," said GCC chairman Gary Wang (
The 11 winning local business leaders include Taoyuan Bus Co (桃園客運), Bank of Kaohsiung (高雄銀行), Sinbon Electronics Co. Ltd (信邦電子) and Chef Teng Food Co (鄧師傅滷味公司).
Wang, moreover, praised the five winning multinational investors for their excellent business management model, which he said "set a good example for local business groups" while the five winning Taipei-based foreign trade offices bridged Taiwanese business with world markets, he said.
The five multinational award winners were DuPont Taiwan Ltd chairman Tsay Shien-tzong (蔡憲宗), Clariant (Taiwan) Co country president Vincent Liu (劉文龍), Kimberly-Clark Taiwan chairman Kenneth Marshall, ING Life Insurance Co CEO Kenneth Shih (石寶忠) and Swire Coca-Cola Taiwan Ltd general manager Hugh Inman.
Addressing the ceremony, Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday said that the DPP government vowed to raise the nation's GDP by 3.4 percent next year, up from 2001's 1.4 percent while increasing external trade by 7.1 percent next year, up from 2001's 0.5 percent. Lu also noted that the DPP-led Cabinet has vowed that Taiwan's industrial production will grow to 5.9 percent next year, up from 2001's 0.61 percent.
"Business people should keep their business focus, managerial roots and capital here in Taiwan," Lu said.
While Lu addressed the DPP government's efforts to bring about an economic turnaround, Wang urged the authorities to speed up business deregulation and globalization, improving Taiwan's investment environment.
Swire Coca-Cola's Inman said that Taiwan should cut red tape to better re-adjust itself to economic developments in Asia and to re-engage itself in the greater China region.
Saying that improvements have been made in the nation's economic transition, Inman, however, complained that the world's largest soft-drink maker pays much higher commodity taxes (15 percent) in Taiwan than the nation's IT industries, which enjoyed many tax breaks.
After having increased local investments in the past years, the well-known Kleenex tissue maker Kimberly-Clark was very optimistic about the nation's future economic development and improving investment environment, chairman Kenneth Marshall said.
With a plan to invest NT$300 million in the next three years, Clariant's Liu said that the chemical product maker will root its business focus in Taiwan before Chinese competition kicks in.
As the biggest multinational investor in Taiwan, DuPont's Tsay said the company has poured more than US$1 billion of investment into Taiwan over the last three decades.
He, however, expected the nation's economic development to successfully transit from a labor-intense to a more value-added and knowledge-based economy.
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