Taiwan was ranked the world’s fourth-best investment destination in a report released last week by US-based Business Environment Risk Intelligence SA (BERI), down one notch from its previous ranking.
Taiwan garnered a profit opportunity recommendation (POR) of 61, ranking fourth among the 50 major countries assessed by BERI, which uses POR to gauge whether the business environment merits investment.
ASIA RANKING
Photo: Billy H.C. Kwok, Bloomberg
Taiwan finished behind Switzerland, Norway and South Korea in BERI’s first report of this year, but ahead of Singapore (sixth), China (12th), Japan (14th), Indonesia (17th), Malaysia (20th), Vietnam (22nd), the Philippines (23rd), India (24th) and Thailand (39th).
Each year, BERI issues its report in April, August and December.
Three key indicators are used by BERI to assess a country’s investment risk: operations risk, political risk, and a remittance and repatriation factor.
Taiwan remained third for operations risk, sharing the spot with Australia and following the US and Switzerland.
POLITICAL RISK
Regarding political risk, Taiwan finished 21st, down seven spots from the previous report in December last year.
It also finished seventh in Asia, behind Singapore, China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia.
BERI forecast that Taiwan would fall to 24th in the political risk category by next year.
In the remittance and repatriation category, Taiwan retained the world’s top spot with a score of 80.
It also led the world in the category’s four subindices: accumulated international reserves, foreign-exchange generation, foreign debt assessment and legal framework.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
Handset camera lens maker Largan Precision Co (大立光) on Sunday reported a 6.71 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for the third quarter, despite revenue last month hitting the highest level in 11 months. Third-quarter revenue was NT$17.68 billion (US$581.2 million), compared with NT$18.95 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. The figure was in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$17.9 billion, but missed the market consensus estimate of NT$18.97 billion. The third-quarter revenue was a 51.44 percent increase from NT$11.67 billion in the second quarter, as the quarter is usually the peak
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook