The government will ensure the supply of grain and prevent the prices of goods being artificially forced up, hoping to ease consumer price inflation that has come under criticism from the public, Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said yesterday.
Although the Consumers' Foundation (消基會) has urged the government to suspend the floating fuel price mechanism as gasoline prices are breaking new highs each week, the minister insisted the measure would continue to reflect the real cost of oil.
Chen made the remarks after a inter-departmental meeting held at the ministry to discuss the supply of raw materials and grain -- such as soybeans, corn and wheat -- whose prices have been rising due to extra demand caused by the development of biofuels.
The price of imported soybeans has risen 51 percent from US$206 per tonne in 2001 to US$312 per tonne for the first four months of this year, government statistics showed. In the same period, the price of corn has jumped by nearly 86 percent to US$210 per tonne.
The ministry will continue to monitor the market and work with the Fair Trade Commission to investigate any market manipulation, Chen said.
Chen denied a Chinese-language China Times report that the ministry planned to import cheaper grain from China to ease the price inflation, saying China also has to import these goods.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last