From the incentives provided by the Taipei or Kaohsiung city government, I didn’t see they offer grants (or as you mentioned as “money”). But I can arrange you to visit the Invesment Service Center when you travel to Taiwan this year. The Investment Service Center will provide you necessary assistance regarding setting up a new business in Taiwan, including arranging meetings with local governments. During the meetings with the people from local government, you may raise all your questions and concerns, including grants or other possible incentives.
So for the people in the know here, does the local government actually offer grants? Because from what I remember posted here before (and now can’t find) they did offer a poster here a grant for a business startup.
Is this just a matter of speaking to the local government, and if they like the idea, they can decide what to offer or is there a more formal process? Or is this just a dead end to pursue?
The info posted on that was very misleading. There were a whole raft of restrictions on the grants – one of the major ones being you had to be graduating from a university or a recent grad to get the grant. It’s not as if the government was just handing out money to anyone that wanted to open a business, even though that was implied. Don’t believe everything you read.
It wasn’t me. I’ve never owned a business in Taiwan, never received any money from the Taiwan govt and have no idea how to receive such a grant. Sorry I can’t help you, but best of luck to you.
What kind of scale are you looking at and what type of business? The IDIC is of no practical use to any small startup - they are mainly interested in larger industrial projects that will immediately begin to employ local staff and/or support the local economy.
There are some loans available for small business startups by young entrepeneurs, and in theory there is no restriction on nationality. Their use is almost exclusively limited to purchasing equipment and/or expanding an already proven small business.
I am not aware of any generally available grants, only tax incentives for large corporations or government-backed loans for smaller operations.
[quote=“llary”]What kind of scale are you looking at and what type of business? The IDIC is of no practical use to any small startup - they are mainly interested in larger industrial projects that will immediately begin to employ local staff and/or support the local economy.
There are some loans available for small business startups by young entrepeneurs, and in theory there is no restriction on nationality. Their use is almost exclusively limited to purchasing equipment and/or expanding an already proven small business.
I am not aware of any generally available grants, only tax incentives for large corporations or government-backed loans for smaller operations.[/quote]
Hi llary, Thanks for the above. The woman from TECO confirmed all of the above today, but your comment double confirms it for me.
She is checking into the facts to ensure there is no catch in foreigners setting up a business that I should be aware about.
While I was in Kaohsiung, a US run bar owner told me that i could use NEXIA, a company that I would provide the investment too, and they would take care of all the government paperwork, so that sounds like the easier way to go so as to not run into any snags.
That would have been me, stating the fact that I had received a grant and nothing more. It took nearly a year to get all the money, btw.
I applied to a specific program that has since been discontinued. (Rather, followers are now excluded.) There are others, such as the SBIR, but you really need to go through some ‘recognised’ channel to get them.
The best place to start is to contact local universities and find one that has a business incubator. Most of them do, and they will assist you with identifying and applying for the right grant - in exchange for a percentage of the money.
Over the last weeks I have attended several seminars regarding what government grants are available like SBIR, ASSTD, and CITD. It is sure not easy to apply for these, but using the right project it still seems like a useful effort. And, once one has applied for one grant, it is obviously MUCH easier to apply for the next.
Putting my ECCT SME Centre (sme-centre.ecct.com.tw) hat on I am thinking we could arrange a paid half-day seminar/workshop in English about these things. The consultants that taught the seminars I attended could probably be hired to give the seminars in English as well.
I have confirmed that these grants are for sure available for Taiwanese companies with foreign owners and foreign fuzeren.
I am thinking the agenda could be:
Overview of the grants
Who can apply
Application process
Suitable projects that might get accepted
Who can help - consultants and Phd’s (they looove Phd’s) who can help with the applications and projects to increase the probability of success.
Workshop/Q&A where we can discuss our respective projects and how to tweak the business plans to make the suitable for one grant or another.
Would there be an interest for a seminar like this? If so, any suggestions regarding the agenda?
