President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of April 28 with Carol Bartz, President and CEO of Yahoo. During the meeting, the president explained the strengths of Taiwan's ICT industry and the advantages of its geographical location. He also pointed out the government's efforts to attract companies from throughout the world to invest here, and urged Yahoo to increase its investment in Taiwan and work with Taiwan to build even greater business opportunities in the global online market.
The president remarked that Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, and soon became the world's most important portal site and Internet services provider, with a customer base of 500 million people. The Yahoo search engine is heavily used in Taiwan, and it has made considerable contributions in the development of Internet services here, he said.
President Ma noted that Taiwan was ranked 12th in the world in the digital economy rankings released by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2010. Meanwhile, the latest Networked Readiness Index issued by the World Economic Forum ranked Taiwan sixth globally. These numbers highlight Taiwan's strengths in the manufacture of information hardware, and stand as international recognition of the nation's software prowess, the president said.
President Ma told Ms. Bartz that the government's goal is to turn Taiwan into a global headquarters for Taiwan companies and a regional headquarters for multinational corporations, and noted that Taiwan's location in the center of East Asia provides it with an advantage in this regard. The president furthermore pointed out that last year Taiwan and mainland China signed the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement and quite a few multinational enterprises have since begun evaluating the feasibility of establishing their Asia-Pacific operations headquarters in Taiwan.
The president furthermore said that Taiwan is an extremely important overseas market for Yahoo. E-commerce revenues in Taiwan last year exceeded NT$36 billion, he remarked. Noting that Singapore presently serves as Yahoo's regional operations center for Southeast Asia, President Ma stated that Taiwan has increasingly become a Northeast Asia transportation hub in recent years, with direct flights having commenced between Taipei's downtown Songshan Airport and inner-city airports in Tokyo and Shanghai. Authorities are currently working to lay the groundwork for flights between Songshan Airport and Seoul's downtown Gimpo International Airport. As for sea transport, Taiwan is the closest to major ports throughout East Asia in terms of both distance and travel time, which is a big competitive advantage. Therefore, he said, Yahoo is strongly encouraged to invest further in Taiwan.
President Ma noted that mainland China last year became the world's second largest economy, and that Taiwan is located extremely close to the mainland. In addition, a new submarine cable across the Taiwan Strait will make Taiwan even more attractive to Yahoo for Business to Customer (B2C) or Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce in East Asia, he said. Meanwhile, Taiwan has slashed its business income tax rate to 17% from 25%, putting it on a par with Hong Kong and Singapore. As a result, Taiwan is also highly competitive from a tax perspective, the president added.
Lastly, President Ma expressed his hope that Yahoo will take advantage of the foundation it has created in Taiwan not only to bolster its presence here, but also to further establish links to mainland China in order to expand in the largest market in the world. The Taiwan government would be very pleased to provide any assistance or cooperation in this process, he said.
Ms. Bartz was accompanied to the Presidential Office by Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Jung-Chiou Hwang to meet President Ma. Also sitting in on the meeting was National Security Council Advisor Thomas Yuan.