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Senior economics official promises to help auto industry

Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) said yesterday the government would help the auto industry to ride out the financial storm by prioritizing tax reduction.

The government’s assistance would focus on tax reduction, including business tax and commodity tax. However, more discussion of the details was needed before a plan could be made available, Deng told the legislature’s Economics Committee.

His comment came in response to a complaint from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳).

“The local auto industry is in a terrible condition. Does the government have any rescue plans after helping the dynamic random access memory [DRAM] industry?” Chiu asked.

The government’s latest statistics show new car sales plummeted 32.9 percent last month from a year earlier to 17,324 units. In the first 10 months of the year 199,340 new vehicles were sold, a drop of 27.7 percent from the same period last year.

The auto industry has seen declining domestic sales in recent years after a peak in 2005, when 514,627 units were sold.

In response to Chiu’s question, Council for Economic Planning and Development Chairman Chen Tian-jy (陳添枝) said the government was aware of the auto industry’s dire sales performance this year, and has asked the Ministry of Economic Affairs to work on a short-term rescue plan.

He did not elaborate.

An official at the ministry’s Industrial Development Bureau said he had no knowledge of such a rescue plan at the moment.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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