The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lauded the role played by the Taiwanese government in technology innovation. It also notes that this has helped the country escape the middle-income trap and leapfrog to high-income status.
Taiwan’s central bank cited the IMF report released on Tuesday as saying that Taiwan was among the nine economies in the world to boost their income during the period of 1970-2000. The other eight were South Korea, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia.
However, according to the report, only Taiwan and South Korea made it to high-income status. The IMF said that the governments in Taiwan and South Korea mapped out technology development strategies to achieve an “economic miracle”.
The IMF said that an increase in research and development spending, an improvement in education, a hike in the number of science and engineering graduates, and a move towards creating local firms and clusters in the high-tech sector were the key for the two countries to break the middle income trap.