More than 60 development and procurement projects are open to investment from the private sector, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said after its annual investment solicitation convention yesterday.
About 300 domestic and overseas companies attended the convention at the Howard Plaza Hotel in Taipei, which was to promote business opportunities in the public sector.
The ministry presented 63 projects that are to go up for public tender, with their combined value exceeding NT$100 billion (US$3.51 billion).
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said in a speech at the opening ceremony that the ministry has signed contracts with private operators in the past three years totaling nearly NT$170 billion.
It received an award of excellence for soliciting the most private investment for public projects among all government agencies, Lin said.
For example, Hsin Tung Yang Co, a Taiwanese food service retailer, spent about NT$300 million revamping the Guansi Freeway Rest Area and turning it into a Hakka-style shopping facility, which was reopened to the public in October last year, he said.
Classic Railway International Co, which is affiliated with Te Chang Construction Co, plans to spend NT$3 billion building the Taichung Railway Culture Park near Taichung Railway Station, he said, adding the park’s shopping mall was officially opened on Sunday.
Evergreen Marine Corp has invested NT$36.4 billion to build deep-water wharves at the Port of Kaohsiung that can handle ultra-large container ships, Lin said.
The project would help solidify the port’s status as a regional cargo hub, he said.
Of the 63 new projects the ministry presented at the convention, 13 are flagship projects, including one to recruit a contractor to manage and operate the Dapeng Bay holiday resort in Pingtung County’s Donggang Township (東港), the ministry said.
Properties near the high-speed rail stations in Taoyuan and Taichung are also seeking to attract developers, with the estimated investment topping NT$25 billion, it said.
Taiwan Railways Administration properties at Taichung, Yuanlin County and Pingtung railway stations would be developed once the local governments satisfy Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例) requirements, the ministry said, adding that those developments are expected to draw combined investment of NT$15 billion from the private sector.
The Port of Keelung is recruiting a contractor to manage and operate its passenger terminal, and the Port of Anping in Tainan is seeking a developer for a tourism and leisure area, it said.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS