IMD:　Taiwan Comes in the Third Worldwide in Entrepreneurship.

The IMD (International Institute for Management Development), based in Lausanne, Switzerland, conducted surveys on the entrepreneurship of worldwide economies for the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010.  According to the IMD report, Taiwan scored 6.98 (on a scale of one to ten) and ranked the third (second only to Malaysia and Israel with respect to entrepreneurship), moving up four places and receiving the best ranking within the past one decade.  The survey result shows that Taiwan-based companies responded well to the challenges posed by the global financial crisis because it has a strong and nimble entrepreneurial culture. 

New business incorporation and innovative activities have been generally and globally recognized as a reflection of a nation’s entrepreneurial vitality.  According to the data released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, there has been a general downturn in the number of new business incorporation and capital investment levels in recent years, while it is exceptionally noticeable that there had been a total of 18,171 companies incorporated from January to June 2010, which represents a 25.8% surge compared with that in the same period of 2009.  Likewise, a rise by 110.5% also occurs in start-ups capital level of the first six months of 2010, valued at NTD105.66 billion compared with the same period last year.  The foregoing rising figures indicate an upward rebound of entrepreneurial activities.

Venture capital has been serving as an important financing channel for start-ups.  The data shows that there had been NTD24.354 billion raised as venture capital for 13,124 investment cases and supporting 435 companies to become TSE-listed and OTC-listed companies for a period from 1982 to the end of November 2009.  According to IMD’s rating, Taiwan ranks the fourth worldwide in the index of “ease of access to venture capital”, trailing only Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Israel. 

The Ministry of Economic Affairs had launched “New Business Actualization Plan” during the period from 2004 to June 2009 to provide 47,941 persons and 1,292 companies with start-up consultation, bringing in NTD5.697 billion in investment.  In addition, domestic incubation center had assisted 1,214 start-ups with NTD 16.1 billion recruited capital fund and supported 45 TSE-listed and OTC-listed companies from 1997 to June 2009. 

Entrepreneurship serves as an indicator with respect to Taiwan’s competitiveness in the world, which is positive to strengthen innovation energy.  After the global financial crisis and in the post-ECFA period, the government has been actively promoting six emerging industries, ten main service-providing industries, and four emerging smart industries to pave the way for economic structure transformation.  On the other hand, the government has also been actively structuring good investment environment to recruit investment, elevate entrepreneurship, and drive economic growth in a sustained way.  (2010.09) 
/CCS