Industry leaders said yesterday the government should be more resolute, efficient and concrete in seeking to fix the problems affecting the economy, which they said remained unchanged by stimulus measures meant to brighten the business outlook.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) again asked for patience, saying it would take time for the government’s policies to bear fruit and that the economy would show an upturn in the fourth quarter.
Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), chairman of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會), said although President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration had promised that the economy would improve following the transfer of power, he remained unclear as to how it planned to achieve this goal.
“I hope the government can be more concrete and specific about its economic development plans,” Huang said after a luncheon where Liu gave the keynote speech and defended the Cabinet’s performance over the past four months.
The premier reiterated that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration would press ahead and liberalize cross-strait commerce to make Taiwan a regional financial center.
Toward that end, Liu said, the Cabinet has set up a task force to overhaul the nation’s tax system to make it more attractive to investors at home and abroad.
But Huang said the statements sounded empty, and that the government has stayed on the sidelines watching foreign financial woes jolt the local bourse.
He said he doubted Liu’s assertion that the slowdown would come to an end in the fourth quarter.
The premier said the government’s NT$130.1 billion (US$4.1 billion) spending program to fund various public works would help expand domestic demand later this year.
“The biggest challenge lies in the lack of confidence,” Liu said.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics last month forecast that the nation’s GDP would gain 3.74 percent in the last three months of this year. The economy is expected to decelerate to 3.04 percent growth in the third quarter, the statistics agency said.
Kao Yu-jen (高育仁), chairman of Twinhead International Corp (倫飛電腦), said Liu should be firm and resolute when dealing with major public policies.
“It is inevitable that government officials would disagree on different issues,” Kao said. “The premier must hold to his beliefs and avoid appearing that he is wavering.”
Kao also urged the Cabinet to help businesses secure bank loans, saying a credit crunch was the worst thing that could happen to companies amid an economic slowdown.
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TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day