The launch of a new financial aid program aimed at creating jobs has been postponed from October to Jan. 1 next year because the government needs more time to fine tune its implementation, a Cabinet official said yesterday.
Lai Sun-quae (賴杉桂), director of the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, said Premier Wu Den-yi (吳敦義) gave the administration a directive to take an extra three months to make the program more substantive.
The Cabinet has also requested that the administration give more publicity and visibility to the program during the three-month extension period, Lai said.
The administration plans to allocate NT$900 million (US$28.14 million) in subsidies to small and medium-sized enterprises to employ new workers.
Lai said the delay also reflected the Cabinet’s fears that the public would view the subsidy program as an attempt by Wu to cut unemployment to less than 5 percent by the end of this year, keeping with his promise.
Critics of the plan have said the Cabinet intends to use the new job creation program to burnish Wu’s record.
However, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) told reporters the program had nothing to do with Wu’s target regarding the unemployment rate, but rather was aimed at improving the job market.
Earlier this year, Wu promised to step down if the administration failed to lower the jobless rate to less than 5 percent by the end of the year.
However, even if the subsidy program were implemented in early October, the funds would not be handed out until January and the effects on the job market would not become obvious until later next year, Lin said.
The jobless rate in Taiwan was a record 6.13 percent in August last year, as the economy took a hard hit during the global financial crisis, but the rate has been gradually improving since the economy began to recover.
Under the NT$900 million employment creation program, qualifying businesses would be given NT$10,000 a month for six months for each newly hired employee who is under 45 years old and has been out of work for three months.
For new workers 45 years old and older, the NT$10,000 subsidy would be maintained for 12 months.
The number of new employees allowed under the program cannot exceed 30 percent of the company’s total workforce, the plan says.
Businesses are required to submit a proposal to the administration to show that the new employment will enhance their innovative efforts.
In the manufacturing sector, companies with paid-in capital of less than NT$80 million are categorized as small and medium-sized enterprises, while in the non-manufacturing sector small and medium-sized enterprises are those that generate NT$100 million or less in annual sales.
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