State employees could receive slight increase next year

State-run companies' year-end bonuses for this year will not be revealed until May, but an official said aside from the the debt-ridden Aerospace Industrial Devel-opment Corp (漢翔航空), employees in six other firms are expected to receive slight increases in their year-end bonuses from last year.

The other six companies include Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電), Tang Eng Iron Works Corp (唐榮), Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖), Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油), China Shipbuilding Corp (中船) and Taiwan Water Supply Corp (台灣自來水). Year-end bonuses for these state-owned institutions will be reviewed and approved by the Cabinet and Ministry of Audit in May next year.

Generally, staff of each company will be awarded at least 2-months' salary as their year-end bonuses, said Hu Wen-chung (胡文中), an official in charge of employee bonuses at the Commission of National Corporations under the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Aerospace Industrial, which handed out only 2.04-month's salary of year-end bonuses last year, reported a deficit of NT$270 million for the first half of this year, according to the commission's statistics. The company's debt amounted to NT$16.33 billion as of the end of last year, the data shows.

Taisugar, another money-losing company that saw a loss of NT$960 million in pre-tax revenues in the first half of the year, may still gain a slight rise in year-end bonuses as the company earned some money from selling land, Hu said.

As for the money-making firms in the sector, Taipower reported NT$31.3 billion in pre-tax revenues last year, increasing from NT$23.66 billion in the previous year. Taipower also made itself the most profitable state-run company by raking in NT$5.68 billion in pre-tax profits for the first half of this year, an increase of NT$4.63 billion from a goal set by the government for the year.

Taipower employees, along with Taiwan Salt Co (Taisalt, 台鹽) employees, which was spun into a private firm last month, earned 4.6-months' salary as year-end bonuses, the full year-end bonuses, Hu said.