BERI: Taiwan the Third-Best Investment Destination in the World.

The US Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) ranked Taiwan the 3rd best place in the world and the 2nd best place in Asia to invest in, in its latest “Business Risk Report” released in April 2013.  Taiwan received a total score of 73 points and moved up one notch to the 3rd for the category of profit opportunity recommendation (POR), following only Singapore and Switzerland among the 50 countries surveyed in the Report. 

BERI gave Taiwan a B1 rating with respect to Taiwan’s business environment and recommended continued investment in this nation.  It also attributed Taiwan’s rise in the ranking to Taiwan’s sustained efforts to strengthen international economic and trade relationships, particularly by concluding free trade agreements with other countries.  BERI also forecast that Taiwan will be remaining in the same place as the 3rd best investment destination globally in 2014 through 2018, while its total POR score is expected to rise to 75 points in 2018. 

In BERI’s Report, Taiwan ranked 2nd in the operational risk category (the same place in the previous survey), behind only Singapore.  BERI indicated that Taiwan will expand development significantly in renewable energy and green industry and will also relax restrictions on investment from China.  As BERI foresees, Taiwan will remain the second-lowest in terms of operational risk in the world both in 2014 and 2018. 

In addition, Taiwan is the seventh-lowest place worldwide in terms of political risk index (up from the eighth in previous term), following Singapore, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Germany, and Finland.  In Asia, Taiwan comes in 2nd in this index.  According to BERI’ evaluation, Taiwan’s political risk will continue declining in 2014 to be the 6th and further to be the 7th in 2018 in the world.

Taiwan’s foreign exchange risk was assessed to be the 2nd in the world (upon from the 4th in the previous survey), after only Netherlands, topping the list in this index in Asia.  According to BERI, Taiwan’s performance in this index will be continuing improving in 2013 in the aspects of trade surplus and current account performance.  BERI believes that foreign investment in Taiwan will step up steadily.  Preliminary statistics show that Taiwan has attracted foreign investment inflow in an approximate amount of USD389 million in early 2013, which represents a 30.1% increase from the same month of 2012 and makes BERI predict that Taiwan will rank No. 3 in 2014 and No. 2 in 2018 in the world in this index.  (2013.05)
/CCS