Ministry of Economic Affairs actively assisted American companies to invest in Taiwan.　Major semiconductor equipment manufacturer lands in Tainan to set up display panel R&D lab.

According to the Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs (IDB), Applied Materials Inc. (AMI) , the big US-based equipment manufacturer will set up an advanced display technology R&D lab in the Tainan Science Park.  This is AMI's second major investment in Taiwan, the first being the establishment of a manufacturing center in 2010 in the same Science Park.  The IDB had this good news of Taiwan-US cooperation announced as a press release right after the seventh Taiwan-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) meeting successfully ended.

AMI is the world's largest manufacturer of display and semiconductor equipment.  It will have the R&D lab built in the Tainan Science Park to introduce the most advanced CVD and PVD technologies to Taiwan for manufacturing large-size panels, touch screens and other CVD and PVD equipment.  This AMI investment is expected to boost the value of Taiwan's display industry's output as a whole up to TWD100 billion.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has been providing legal and financial advices and overseas travel subsidies to relevant local innovation- and service-related industries in the fields of green energy, biotechnology, intellectual property and information and communication technology to encourage Taiwan-US cooperation initiatives that optimize the collaboration of US patented inventions and core intellectual property and Taiwan's manufacturing edge of having complete manufacturing chain energized by quick responsive merchandizing capability.  To this date, the MOEA has successfully helped realize a number of Taiwan-US cooperation projects involving Taiwan's industries, research institutions, the California Institute of Technology, Pfizer, and University of Cincinnati with the subjects covering the development of process for pharmaceutical raw materials, nano thermoelectric materials and high-end display technology.  These projects are estimated to have created a total potential value of more than TWD16.35 billion for the relevant industries.

According to the MOEA, the industrial cooperation between Taiwan and the US will be worked out to cover service industry in addition to trade and R&D efforts when the Taiwan-US cooperation will enter a new innovation-oriented era.  (2013.03)