Taiwan maintains 6th in BERI ranking, remains "low-risk" environment for investment

January 17, 2007

Taiwan continues to be a low-risk country for investment according to the Business Environment Risk Intelligence's (BERI) third Business Environment Ratings Report for 2006.

Taiwan maintained its No. 6 global ranking as well as most of its previous scores on the BERI report, said the Department of Investment Services (DOIS), which announced the report results.

Taiwan received an "1A" rating on the BERI report -- the highest possible -- which indicates that Taiwan is a low-risk country suitable for investment. Taiwan scored 72 points on BERI's profit opportunity recommendation (POR) score. It has maintained both this score and global ranking on the previous two reports released in 2006.

In the report, BERI said that Taiwan's political risk will gradually decrease as its business environment will improve.

Among the 50 countries included in the BERI evaluation, Taiwan ranked only behind Switzerland, Singpore, Netherlands, Japan, and Norway.

Taiwan remained at third place among Asian countries, behind Singapore (Global Rank No. 2, score of 79) and Japan (Global Rank No. 3, score of 75); Taiwan placed ahead of China (Global Rank No. 17, POR score of 61), Malaysia (Global Rank No. 19, score of 60), South Korea (Global Rank No. 21, score of 59), Thailand (Global Rank No. 39, score of 42),  and Indonesia (Global Rank No. 47, score of 40).

While Taiwan's Political Risk score in the BERI report has dropped in light of recent events, BERI predicts that the cross-strait situation will ease, and Taiwan's political risk will decrease in the next 10 years. BERI also noted that Taiwan could ascend to the No. 2 ranking among Asian countries.

BERI also forecasts that Taiwan's overall business environment will continue to improve, with its POR score rising to 73 and global ranking rising to No.5 to tie with Norway.

(Central News Agency)

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