That technology will allow the Central Taiwan Science Park to deliver to the world's lounge rooms the latest in wide flat panel TVs and super computer screens, some big enough to match a three-seater couch in size.

But it is the speed of development and the rate of companies willing to sign on to the project, on the outskirts of Taichung city, that has impressed its backers and confounded critics.

Lai Ying-hsi, chief of the Taichung government's economic affairs department said sceptics included members of a screening committee established after the Taiwanese cabinet agreed to a feasibility study on the project in January 2001.

"They felt why does Taiwan need another high-tech industrial park while the other ones in the south are only half booked by potential investors due to economic sluggishness," Lai said.

Since the study, 72 companies ready to invest 1.04 trillion Taiwan dollars (31.04 billion US) have won approvals, among them industry leaders including Au Optronics Corp, ProMOS Technologies Inc and US-based Corning.

Lai said it was Taichung's stable electricity and steady water supply which eventually convinced the authorities to proceed. Taichung boasts one of a biggest thermal power plants in Asia while chronic water shortages have dogged science and technology parks elsewhere on the island.

Yang Wen-ke, deputy chief of the park's preparatory committee, said the rapid pace of its development -- in an industry which is consistently tied to tight construction deadlines to deliver next generation products -- was a big factor in winning over more firms.

The first companies began opening their doors within 10 months of the project's drafting.

"The pace of its development is the fastest ever in Taiwan's efforts to build high-tech industrial parks," Yang said. "It changed so fast, you would be amazed by the vast differences registered over every month."

It took Au Optronics just 15 months to complete construction of an 80 billion Taiwan dollar complex to produce 60,000 panels a month which includes the revolutionary 74 by 60 inch television sets.

"Au Optronics Chairman K.T.Lee said 'if Au Optronics had built the plant elsewhere, the construction may not have been as swift'," Lai said, adding that the project was completed 47 days ahead of schedule.

"That is important to a time sensitive industry," Lai said.

US-based Corning followed suit, with a ground breaking in September last year for a glass melting plant that will produce compacted glass substrate to be used in LCD screens.

Then came local memory chip maker ProMOS Technologies, which is designing cutting-edge 90-nanometer technology to produce microchips and 40,000 12-inch wafers a month in two projects which cost 85 billion Taiwan dollars to build.

While Optoelectronics will account for 34 percent of the park's ongoing investment projects, the balance will be filled by precision machinery, biotechnology, semiconductor, computer peripherals and telecommunication projects.

"The demand for land is much stronger than our previous estimates," said Yang from the park's preparatory committee.

Thus authorities plan to expand the size of the park to 1,200 hectares (2,964 acres) after 94 percent of the current 413 hectares of land was booked.

Yang said he was confident the new industrial park would eventually outperform the Hsinchu Science Industrial Park in the north, which has been hailed as the island's answer to Silicon Valley in the United States.

The Hsinchu science park houses 384 high-tech companies focussing on semiconductors, telecommunications, and computer related industries. It churned out products worth 32.41 billion US dollars in 2004.

But the LCD and microchip industry is renowned for its huge consumption of water and investors at Hsinchu have been annoyed by past occasional water shortages.

"The new industrial park is fast coming from behind," Yang said proudly of the Taichung project. Meanwhile Lai touched a raw nerve in regards to competing parks elsewhere, when he asked rhetorically: "Have you ever heard of central Taiwan being gripped by a water shortage?"

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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