The consumer voucher scheme, which expired in September, may have boosted the economic growth by between 0.28 percent and 0.43 percent this year — lower than the government’s earlier estimate of a 0.66 percent GDP boost, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said in its latest publication. The figure was also lower than the council’s early October estimate of a boost of between 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent GDP.
The council, however, added in the report that a survey found that more than 70 percent of Taiwanese supported the council’s voucher scheme at a total cost of NT$85.65 billion (US$2.66 billion).
Giving each citizen NT$3,600 between January and April, the government issued NT$83.26 billion in consumer vouchers, 99.6 percent of which had been cashed before the September deadline, the council said.
The council’s survey showed that some 86 percent of the public said that they had spent more than the vouchers were worth when they used them, with the majority covering the excess with credit cards.
On average, they each spent NT$3,854 on top of the voucher’s NT$3,600, the council’s survey found.
The council also said that domestic electronics makers and service providers such as logistics, telecommunications and medicare industries and the restaurant and hotel industries had benefited from the voucher program.
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