The Alliance for Fair Tax Reform (公平稅改聯盟) yesterday said the proposed pay raise to civil servants could exacerbate the nation’s financial difficulties.
The government proposed to increase salaries by 3 percent for government employees, teachers and military personnel starting from July 1, which would cost the country about NT$22 billion (US$756 million) a year.
“The proposal could further increase civil servants’ retirement pensions, deepening the public’s debt burden,” Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), convener of the alliance, told a media briefing.
The amount payable to civil servants’ pensions totaled NT$8.64 trillion, accounting for 55 percent of the nation’s potential debt of NT$15.7 trillion, the alliance’s data showed.
The government planned to borrow NT$429 billion for this year, the third-highest level in history, indicating the nation’s finances are still in difficulty, Wang said.
The second-highest deficit — NT$445.6 billion — was set in 2009, with a record high NT$493.4 billion last year, data showed.
The Ministry of Finance issued a statement laster in the day saying the money borrowed during the past three years was mainly used on infrastructure, thereby boosting the economy.
The alliance said it would hold a demonstration on May 1 to back its call for the government to pay more attention to the poor, not just civil servants.
Meanwhile, several legislators voiced opposition to the government’s pay raise plan, saying it could widen the income gap among civil servants.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said it would be unfair to give a fixed-rate increase because senior employees who earn NT$100,000 a month would get a raise of NT$3,000, while those earning NT$20,000 a month would only get an increase of NT$600.
Lo said the government should make sure that it would benefit low-paying employees.
“By doing so, we can lessen people’s suffering in the face of rising prices,” she said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) also questioned the propriety of the proposed 3 percent pay hike.
Hsu said he suspected that the KMT was trying to secure the support of civil servants in the next legislative and presidential elections by raising their salaries at this time.
He suggested that the decision on whether to raise the pay of civil servants should be left to the next president, who would have to take into account the country’s overall financial situation.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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
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