Location Advantage

Taiwan recovered as one of the first economies worldwide from the financial crisis. The island is a member of the World Trade Organization, the Asian Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Its location in the centre of the Asia-Pacific region makes it an ideal geographic hub for worldwide transport and logistics. Taiwan has a sound legal system with a high general awareness for human rights as well as for patents and intellectual property rights. Companies can also profit from Taiwan’s political and economical stability.

Geographically, Taiwan finds itself at the very center of the economies of the Asia-Pacific region. To the West lies the world’s second largest economy, China, and to the north the third biggest – Japan. The world’s biggest economy, the United States of America, is located in the East of Taiwan, and to the South you can find the member states of the ASEAN treaty as well as India.

Taiwan has two international airports which offer daily flights to every part of the world. Seven international seaports as well as a high density of railway, roads and highways on the island itself provide excellent options for transport and logistics. Water, gas, electricity and telecommunications are of high quality and relatively inexpensive.

In its 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Taiwan as 13^th overall. The Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) report ranked Taiwan as fourth best investment place worldwide.

Taiwan has a standardized corporate income tax rate of 17%. In some science parks there is also the possibility of tax deduction of R&D expenditures up to a certain percentage.

Three science parks located in the north, center and south of the islands offer various incentives for local and foreign companies and provide an excellent R&D environment. For more information click here.

The Taiwanese government has started several investment promotion programs since the signing of the ECFA. From July till September 2010 many projects with a total value of USD 9.73 bn. were acquired. These projects are mostly from the biotech, digital contents, medicine and health care and the culture and creation sector. The government also opened 57 public construction contracts with a total value of USD 5.51 bn. for private investment.