Taiwan hopes to secure a deal by the end of this year to purchase property in San Francisco to house its representative office, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.
The ministry has narrowed its choices to three properties to serve as the new location for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in San Francisco, Department of General Affairs Director-General Bruce Hung (洪振榮) said.
“It is our hope that we can seal the deal with one of the properties by the end of this year,” Hung told a regular news briefing.
Moving into a new representative office will have to be completed in three years after securing the property based on regulations, he added.
A report on the procurement project that the ministry sent to lawmakers earlier this month for review showed that the ministry is allocating NT$2.2 billion (US$75.5 million) toward buying a property to use as the nation’s representative office in San Francisco.
At present, the ministry pays about US$3 million in annual rent for the office in San Francisco’s financial district at Montgomery Street — a five-minute walk from Chinatown.
To save on rent, the ministry has been searching for a permanent location to house the representative office.
The plan to purchase a San Francisco office property has been approved by the Cabinet for inclusion in the central government’s budget for this year, the ministry said.
TECO in San Francisco is one of 12 Taiwan representative offices in the US, and is in charge of Northern California, Nevada and Utah.
Taiwan has 110 overseas offices, of which only 17 are owned by the government. Since 2002, the ministry has been trying to buy office spaces overseas to save on rent.
Seven of the 17 NT$10 million (US$311,604) winning receipts from the November-December uniform invoice lottery remain unclaimed as of today, the Ministry of Finance said, urging winners to redeem their prizes by May 5. The reminder comes ahead of the release of the winning numbers for the January-February lottery tomorrow. Among the unclaimed receipts was one for a NT$173 phone bill in Keelung, while others were for a NT$5,913 purchase at Costco in Taipei's Neihu District (內湖), a NT$49 purchase at a FamilyMart in New Taipei City's Tamsui District (淡水), and a NT$500 purchase at a tea shop in New Taipei City's
Taiwanese officials were shown the first of 66 F-16V fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, adding the aircraft has completed an initial flight test and is expected to be delivered later this year. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Lockheed Martin’s F-16 C/D Block 70 (also known as F-16V) assembly line in South Carolina on March 16 to view the aircraft. The jet will undergo a final acceptance flight in the US before being delivered to Taiwan, the
The New Taipei Metro's Sanyin Line and the eastern extension of the Taipei Metro's Tamsui-Xinyi Line (Red Line) are scheduled to begin operations in June, the National Development Council said today. The Red Line, which terminates at Xiangshan Station, would be connected by the 1.4km extension to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, while the Sanyin Line would link New Taipei City's Tucheng and Yingge stations via Sanxia District (三峽). The council gave the updates at a council meeting reviewing progress on public construction projects for this year. Taiwan's annual public infrastructure budget would remain at NT$800 billion (US$25.08 billion), with NT$97.3
Deliveries of delayed F-16V jets are expected to begin in September, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said today, after senior defense officials visited the US last week. The US in 2019 approved a US$8 billion sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 jets to Taiwan, a deal that would take the nation’s F-16 fleet to more than 200 jets, but the project has been hit by issues including software problems. Koo appeared today before a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which is discussing different versions of the special defense budget this week. The committee is questioning officials today,
RSS