Taiwan to invest NT$1 trillion over eight years to help small businesses upgrade
Taiwan's cabinet approved a draft law pouring NT$1 trillion into small and micro businesses over the next eight years — good news for the island's smallest firms, shops, and traditional industries.
- The economics ministry will fund a long-term pot of money to help small firms modernize, with the bill now heading to parliament for approval.
- Support widens well past factories to cover shopping districts, markets, local specialty industries, farm businesses, and hotels, plus cheap loans and a new farm credit guarantee fund.
- A "big helps small" plan would plug small suppliers into the supply chains, retail networks, and online platforms of Taiwan's largest companies.
- Tax breaks get sweeter: a bigger write-off for research spending, a much lower spending threshold to qualify for equipment and AI upgrades, and larger credits for hiring and raising pay.
- The help reaches more than a million one-person and partnership shops that make up most of Taiwan's businesses.
Outlook: Premier Cho Jung-tai has told the ministry to push lawmakers from all parties to pass the bill quickly, so the money's timing hinges on parliament.