Eight major industrial and business groups voiced their support yesterday for the government’s efforts to help create more than 150,000 new jobs this year in an effort to keep the country’s annual unemployment rate below 4.5 percent.
The groups, led by the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (中小企業協會), are scheduled to endorse on Friday a campaign to respond to the government’s job-creation drive by calling upon private companies to keep their redundancy rates below 1 percent.
Association chairman Roscher Lin (林秉彬) said that about 1,000 association members were expected to take part in the endorsement, adding, however, that he did not know how many companies would step forward to support the call for low-redundancy.
The industrial and business groups made the decision in response to an announcement by the Cabinet on Sunday that it would pool government resources to create jobs and alleviate rising unemployment.
Executive Yuan spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said the government’s economic stimulus package for this year would be adjusted to increase public sector investment to NT$130 billion (US$3.88 billion) — up from the initial NT$100 billion — and that the budget increase and adjustment of priority investment targets would create more than 150,000 jobs this year, which in turn would help bring unemployment down to below 4.5 percent.
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