Cabinet approves measure to cut tariffs

The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Custom Law (關稅法) allowing the government to reduce tariffs on eight major commodities -- durum wheat, wheat flour, groats and wheatmeal, corn for feed, cornflour, corn distillersgrain, soybeans and soft white wheat.

If the amendment passes the legislature, it will give officials -- bound by the current law to lower the tariffs to a maximum of 50 percent -- the power to cut tariffs to zero.

"High commodity prices are hard to swallow. The government should face up to the problem and help the public tide over," Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said at the Cabinet's weekly meeting.

The government has halved tariffs on seven of the major commodities, excluding soft white wheat, since August to ease the burden of high import costs, leading to an estimated loss of between NT$200 million (US$6.6 million) and NT$300 million in tax revenue.

"The amendment, if passed, will generate another tax loss of about NT$816 million. We hope importers would set prices to reflect this reduction in import costs," Vice Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said at a press conference after the meeting.