Taiwan hopes to secure a deal by the end of this year to purchase property in San Francisco to house its representative office, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official said Tuesday.

Bruce Hung (???), chief of MOFA’s Department of General Affairs, said the ministry has so far narrowed down three potential properties to serve as the new location for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in San Francisco, the nation’s de facto consulate in the American city.

“It is our hope that we can seal the deal with one of the properties by the end of this year,” Hung said at a regular news briefing.

According to regulations, moving into a new representative office will have to be completed in three years after securing the property, he added.

Hung made the remarks when asked about the latest development in the overseas office property purchase plan.

According to a report on the procurement project that MOFA sent to lawmakers earlier this month for review, the ministry is allocating a total of NT$2.2 billion (US$75.40 million) toward purchasing a property to use as the nation’s representative office in San Francisco.

Currently, the ministry has to pay about US$3 million in annual rent for the office, which is located in San Francisco’s financial district at Montgomery Street and about five minutes’ walk from Chinatown.

In order to save on rent, the ministry has been searching for a permanent location to house the representative office and the plan to purchase a San Francisco office property has been approved by the Cabinet for inclusion in the central government’s 2022 budget, according to MOFA.

TECO in San Francisco is one of 12 Taiwan representative offices in the United States, and is in charge of Northern California, Nevada, and Utah.

Of Taiwan’s 110 overseas offices, the government only owns 17 of them so far. MOFA has since 2002 been trying to buy office locations overseas in order to save on rent.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel