In a symposium with business leaders today, Premier Mao Chi-kuo elaborated on the government's efforts to upgrade the nation's service industry to enlarge its global presence.
The nation has advanced to a service-economy era, Mao said. Taiwan's service industry is highly innovative, and it possesses talent, quality, and the potential and capacity for generating high value-added services. It is the lifeblood that sustains Taiwan's economic dynamism and a major platform that employs a large number of workers, thus enhancing the nation's overall social welfare, the premier emphasized.
However, given the state of the overall industrial structure, the nation's service industry will have to overcome innumerable challenges. First of all, the service industry is basically oriented around small- and medium-sized enterprises, and its business operations chiefly target the domestic market. Therefore, augmenting the industry's size and scope will require much effort. Moreover, most of the industry's employees are in low-ranking positions that offer little or no incentive to attract talents, resulting in an insufficient work force.
In order to raise the quality and scope of the nation's service industry, the government has adopted the dual development strategies of "upgrading the industrial structure domestically and developing international markets outwardly," the premier pointed out. To upgrade the industry's structure, the government has been working to expedite industrial transformation by removing obstacles through deregulation, capital injection and experts' assistance. For example, in revising the Statute for Industrial Innovation, provisions concerning technology stakes and employee incentives have been amended to help industries to more easily and effectively retain talents. Meanwhile, the government has been promoting an industrial upgrade and transformation action plan that aims to raise the quality of products.
The premier pointed out that the Executive Yuan National Development Fund has allocated a special amount for investment in nine strategic service industries—domestic information services, Chinese-language e-commerce, digital content, cloud computing, exhibitions, taking Taiwanese cuisines global, and international logistics, among others—in the hope of transforming and upgrading the overall service industry.
The premier pointed out that the Executive Yuan recently announced a plan to consolidate and boost the nation's economic structure, focusing on upgrading industries, expanding exports and promoting investment. The plan's measures are to boost the service industry's overall competitiveness, and encompass promoting the globalization of e-commerce platforms and ushering in the smart service industry chain; strengthening medical, educational, cultural, recreational, and experience-oriented services; expanding the locomotive role of the tourism industry by incorporating health care and medical check-ups, gourmet foods, agriculture, cultural and creative industries, and tourism factories; and encouraging the development of health care industries for elderly people.