In an exclusive interview with American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan Chair Dan Silver, TaiwanPlus discusses AmCham's annual business sentiment review and why businesses report sustained confidence in the country's economy while seeing room for regulatory improvement.
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00:00What is behind the general business confidence in Taiwan, both over the next 12 months and over a more long-term period?
00:07In this year's Business Climate Survey, a survey that we conduct every year in the fourth quarter and released this month in January,
00:16we saw sustained high levels of confidence from our members in both the future economic outlook for the next 12 months,
00:25as well as their own revenue prospects for the next 12 months and three years.
00:31When we look at what's behind that, Taiwan obviously has many great strengths.
00:35Among those are rule of law, a tremendously talented base of intellectual capacity and workforce,
00:46and also an established role at the center of some of the world's most important existing and future industries.
00:54So when we take all that together and look at prospects both for the economy and for company growth,
01:02our members reflect back that about 80 percent see the economy as either sustained or getting even better over the coming 12 months,
01:11and an even higher number are saying so for their own revenues.
01:15One of the more surprising numbers is that only 7 percent of businesses say they were affected significantly by cross-strait relations,
01:22and we've seen more domestic issues such as energy actually take more significance in this business report.
01:29Can you talk a little bit about how some of these domestic issues, such as energy, are now leapfrogging concerns about cross-strait relations?
01:38And we've certainly seen geopolitical uncertainty rise to certain high levels over these recent years.
01:44If we go back to 2022, again taking our survey in the fourth quarter of each year,
01:51it came just a few short months after Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan when the media globally,
01:58locally was very much focused on what was happening around Taiwan, and so we saw the numbers spike.
02:06The following year they came back down, and then this year, third year now, we've seen them really stabilize on that question.
02:13So what I think we're seeing is that there is a settling in, that people see this as the new reality.
02:19It's become, our members have become more or less accustomed to that reality.
02:24They've factored that into their plans.
02:26Forty percent, for example, of our members are saying that they're developing business continuity plans to help mitigate impacts, etc.
02:33And so the questions return to sort of these ones of what can Taiwan do,
02:38what can all of us do as stakeholders to improve Taiwan's economic outlook and prospects,
02:43and that is indeed where energy came out as a top area of concern and interest from our members.
02:49One of the additional domestic concerns was over government regulation and transparency.
02:55Can you speak to a little bit about what you're hearing on the ground,
02:57not so much concerning the lack of transparency, but about how regulation and transparency can improve?
03:04So for the last 10 plus years, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan
03:10has promoted what's known as good regulatory practice.
03:14This is a concept of how to get the maximum amount of input and ideas from all stakeholders,
03:22the public, companies, and every institution, in the formation of new rules and regulations.
03:29And Taiwan actually has done quite well in terms of how the infrastructure
03:35for the development of good regulatory practice has been rolled out over these years.
03:39But we have seen some of the practical aspects of implication,
03:43the results of that implementation, being less than desirable.
03:47So our members have reported that they have concern
03:51about whether rules and regulations and laws are interpreted on a consistent basis.
03:56And so there's still definitely room for improvement.
03:59But I think it's important to remember that when we talk about room for improvement,
04:02we are talking about comparing Taiwan to the very highest standards globally.
04:06We think that as a democracy, as a place where the public is engaged on so many other issues,
04:12rulemaking should be subject to the exact same kind of public oversight and involvement
04:17as the rest of Taiwan's system.
04:19Just recently, we've seen the United States House pass a bill regarding double taxation
04:24between the United States and Taiwan.
04:27Can you speak a little bit to the importance of this legislation?
04:31Yes.
04:32We were very pleased to see that the U.S. House has passed that
04:36on an almost unanimous basis in the past couple of days.
04:40And it's something that our members have advocated for and asked for for quite some time.
04:45We see this as helping the U.S.-Taiwan trade relationship in really two key ways.
04:50One is that there are many small and medium-sized enterprises,
04:54really on both sides, that want to invest in both directions,
04:58but may feel, especially for those smaller companies,
05:01that there are some limitations associated with taxation regimes.
05:04And secondly, we think that this kind of initiative,
05:07like so many other things going on now between Washington and Taipei,
05:10is good for the overall relationship.
05:12It's a mutual recognition of how important each side is to the other.
05:16Dan, thank you very much for joining us.
05:18My pleasure.