Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, new company registrations in the first seven months of this year increased 1.5 percent from a year earlier to 24,543, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday, while 17,939 companies were deregistered.
As of July 31, there were 712,000 registered companies in the nation, a record high and up 0.9 percent from 705,000 at the end of last year, the ministry said.
Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Huang Wei-jie (黃偉傑) attributed the increase in the number of registered companies this year to the government’s effective COVID-19 prevention measures, allowing the nation to avoid massive lockdowns and for business activities to proceed as normal.
“In past crises, you saw a drop in the number of new company registrations while the number of companies deregistering spiked, leading to a net decrease in the number of companies,” Huang said. “However, the number of registered companies actually rose this year despite the COVID-19 crisis.”
The number of registered firms in Taiwan was essentially flat between 2018 and last year at about 705,000, which Huang said was caused by an initiative by the ministry to deregister inactive companies in line with global measures against money laundering.
The total capital of the 712,000 registered companies also rose to NT$24.94 trillion (US$844.7 billion) at the end of July, an increase of NT$29.7 billion from the end of last year, the ministry said.
A breakdown shows that 51.5 percent of the registered capital was concentrated in Taipei, 9.4 percent in New Taipei City and 8.4 percent in Kaohsiung, it said.
Among the newly registered companies this year, 22.4 percent were professional, scientific or technical companies, 16.8 were manufacturers and 13.7 were construction firms, the ministry said.
As of the end of July, about 220,000 of the registered companies were headed by women, accounting for 30.9 percent of the total and up 2 percentage points from 2011, it said.
Huang said time would tell whether COVID-19 would still end up having an effect on company registrations, “but we are at least already in positive territory for the year.”
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