Dear Subscriber,

spring has arrived in Taiwan and even though North still sees way too much rain the weather is turning for the better and with the exception of truly heartbreaking development in Europe, the outside world is moving back to normal, if ever so slowly.

Inside Taiwan we have our first real Covid spike and with 80+% vaxxed and 60+% boosted we are surely going to get through this sooner or later and for everyone's personal and business sake we aim for sooner.

Speaking of business, we have teamed up with most other Chambers of Commerce in Taiwan to continue put pressure on the government to open up borders for business travel but with forthcoming regional elections this does seem to be a particularly delicate hot potato. 1 case in every 1000 is imported and it's clearly not travel that tips the scale in Taiwan.

Here at the Chamber we’re busy arranging alternatives to our normal physical events; partnership meetings between SCCT-members, providing consultancy services to individual members and driving our usual online events.

In closing we would like to extend our thank you's to the SCCT Board of Directors and Supervisors for their commitment and partnership this past period, our organisation is strong because of you.

We wish you the best of summers and hope we will get to meet with everyone again real soon!

/Fredrik & Ingrid

If you have not yet responded to Team Sweden's Business Climate Survey we kindly ask you to please do so. Your views provide important input to our operations plan and our annual position paper.

Just send an email to Fredrik should you not find the link sent to you from feedback@questback.net on April 12th and May 23rd.

As a service to Managing Directors, General Managers and selected key stakeholders in SCCT's Corporate Member community we are offering a free subscription to services from Safeture. 

You may recall that we did a seminar together with Safeture in the autumn of 2020 and a result of that we have established a partnership with them, allowing you personally to have full access to their services.

Safeture can best be described as a platform, which takes care of all your personal corporate risk and crisis management needs, wherever you are and wherever you may travel in the world.

If you have not received an invitation and are interested in this free service offer please get in contact with us at SCCT.

We can't wait to arrange meetings with you and our most recent nine member companies, represented by:

Axis Communications Jessica Chang

Beijer Electronics Wesley Chen SILVER MEMBER

Eiger Law Michael Werner

Hexagon Jeffrey Lee

NorQ Charlotta Noren

NEFAB Jacob Liao

Ensypre Elias Ek

QuecTel Wireless Solutions Ltd. Michael Wallon GOLD MEMBER

Korenix Technology Wesley Chen SILVER MEMBER

The Swedish Chamber of Commerce Taipei's Annual General Meeting takes place mid September this year. This is a very important meeting for a number of reasons:

An invitation accompanied by a presentation of all Director and Supervisor ballot candidates will arrive in everyone's mailbox by end of June.

Nominations for Individual Board is open and if you are interested in directly being able to affect how the Chamber operates then we 

On April 14-17 we welcomed ten Swedish Parliamentarians to Taiwan.

One important item on the agenda was to discuss the concept of 'House of Sweden' and as a result of this visit to Taiwan and following a Parliamentary debate the Swedish Parliament voted in favor of a name change of the Swedish Trade Office to 'House of Sweden'.

SCCT sent a followup letter to Parliamentarians covering Sweden's current somewhat lackluster official representation in Taiwan, which areas SCCT believes should be explored in order to expand our members business', build sustainable guanxi (关系) between our two economies and assist Swedes living in Taiwan.

When this name change will take place and how 'House of Sweden' is supposed to be furnished remains to be seen but it is safe to say that this will be done by the new government after general elections in Sweden in September 2022.

In closing we will let our friend Lukas provide a few details on the Parliamentary visit and decision in a popular Youtube-format:

During the past two years we has spent time establishing our Chamber brand online. It's starting to pay off and we now celebrate our 1000th follower on LinkedIn and we recently hit 2200 followers on Facebook.

Our words are spreading far and wide, inside and outside Taiwan borders and it certainly helps make Sweden and your brands more well- known and brings attention to the elements of Swedish business in Taiwan, which we are looking to improve.

2021 and 2022 has been different in many ways and Taiwan's strict border controls unfortunately meant that our Swedish intern Axel Leven was not able to get into Taiwan in 2021. After a few months with remote work Axel was released and we were lucky to hire Ms. Ingrid Chow who now ends her internship with SCCT on May 31st. 

Our new intern is Ms. Sarah Nygård and we are working with partners and the Taiwanese government to ensure Sarah is able to travel to Taiwan sometime in August/September this year.

As an interim bridge between Ingrid and Sarah SCCT has signed a foreign student named Karen Natalia who will work with us during June-September.

'

First of all we are excited about our collaboration with the Chamber on the Business Climate Survey 2022, and our joint opportunity to include this in the global survey, and this will enable us to compare the Swedish business sentiment with other markets around the globe.

 

We are seeing continued very strong interest in the Taiwanese market from new entrants, and especially the Swedish Semiconductor Alliance, an alliance created by Business Sweden in collaboration with Smarter Electronics Systems, is generating a lot of interest from Swedish SMEs to explore the local market. We also encourage larger companies to be a part of this effort and we encourage everyone who is interested to get in touch with Business Sweden to know more.

 

While the virus has curtailed our event schedule in spring, we are gearing up for a busy autumn with events such as our Water by Sweden event in Taichung on 22nd August, the first instalment of our IndTech / Smart Industry Event on the 20th September and Energy Taiwan pavilion on the 19-21st October. We will also host a HR Manager roundtable for Swedish companies on the 22nd June to discuss the current important HR related topics such as recruitment, hybrid work and talent retention.

 

Last but not least we are pleased to have welcomed two new member to the Business Sweden team, Jack Lai and and Ken Chen who have both joined us as associates in May. Jack comes from Deloitte Consulting and Ken from the market research company Ipsos, and we are excited to have two new such high calibre colleagues onboard.

 

We wish you all a great May, and we look forward catching up once the current covid wave has settled down”

 

Best Regards

Petter Sund