The Ministry of Finance said yesterday that it would decide by the end of this year whether or not to establish a state-owned holding company to better manage government-owned businesses and assets.
Officials at the ministry’s National Treasury Agency said that the Cabinet asked the ministry in February to come up with a more efficient mechanism, in the form of a fund, committee or a company, to integrate and consolidate the government’s various resources.
Following this, the agency commissioned a research project by local academics and experts on the matter.
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday that the research group had presented an interim report to the ministry. Lee declined to confirm this, but said a comprehensive report is expected to be released by the end of this year.
“In order to manage the government’s stakes more systematically and to make the most of them, we have asked academics and experts to discuss the possibility by looking at other countries which have adopted a similar mechanism,” Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) told a media briefing yesterday.
Lee’s remark came after the Economic Daily News reported yesterday that the ministry was studying the possibility of setting up a state-owned holding company and Bloomberg Newswires said the government was considering setting up a sovereign wealth fund similar to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte to manage the nation’s assets.
But Lee said that the issue was still “undecided,” adding that whether a holding company or an ad-hoc committee was established, the purpose would be the same: to efficiently manage the government’s stakes and boost the development of the nation.
“The government holds stakes in a total of 419 companies, which takes enormous human and material resources to manage,” Lee said.
“The mechanism can be in any form. Every country has different conditions. Establishing a state holding company is not necessarily the only option,” he said.
The government aims to reduce its holdings in these 419 companies managed by various ministries, ranging from from China Steel Corp (中鋼) to Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行).
Currently, the Cabinet has a supervisory task force responsible for managing the government’s stakes, including personnel appointment and salaries for board directors and supervisors. However, Lee said that this platform can be extended further to integrate more resources.
But the planned state investment firm will not include assets owned by the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the ministry said.
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