Council for the Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) yesterday urged the government-owned National Development Fund to step up investment in the nation’s cultural and creative industries.
Last month, the National Development Fund said it had invested NT$90 million (US$3.04 billion) in the production of the Taiwanese movie Seediq Bale through the Council for Cultural Affairs’ (CCA) cultural and creative project. The NT$200 billion fund has a designated budget of NT$10 billion for investment in the CCA project.
Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale was the first Taiwanese movie to receive financial support from the National Development Fund through the CCA project, Liu said, adding that the application was sent under the name of the venture capital unit of Central Pictures Corp (中影).
“The investment in Seediq Bale [which cost nearly NT$700 million to produce] was quite conservative,” Liu told a media briefing.
The CCA has the right to expand the investment by up to three-fold from the original amount set by applicants, Liu said. That means if Seediq Bale’s producer had applied for NT$90 million, the council could have raised the total investment amount to NT$270 million.
“If the government supports the industry, it should invest in the sector in a more positive manner,” she said.
However, it is the National Development Fund that decides whether to invest in a case, as well as how much it should invest, in the CCA’s cultural and creative project.
Liu said she might meet with CCA officials to discuss if the fund’s management team could play a more active role in the terms of decision-making for the project’s funding.
Companies in the cultural and creative industries that need capital support can also directly send their application to the fund or to the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA), instead of applying through the CCA project, Liu said.
SMEA also has a budget of NT$10 billion from the fund, Liu added.
Other than investment through the CCA project, the fund had also invested in two other Taiwanese movies —NT$7.3 million in Black and White (痞子英雄) and NT$5 million in The Killer Who Never Kills (殺手歐陽盆栽).
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