The first review of a draft act to allocate a budget for the government’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program yesterday hit a road block at the legislature as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers demanded that the government replace the draft with a better version.
The legislature’s Economics Committee has held six public hearings over the past month to collect opinions on the Cabinet’s plan to spend NT$880 billion (US$29.07 billion) on infrastructure projects over the next eight years.
KMT lawmakers said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government should not rush the bill, as the budget that would span two presidential terms would be the largest government-proposed infrastructure program in the nation’s history.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
KMT Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗) said he agrees with investing in infrastructure to boost the economy, but added that he cannot support the bill, as the government prepared the budget in only one month without providing any financial or feasibility assessment.
KMT Legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁) said the proposal was not based on forward thinking, as the more than NT$420 billion earmarked for railway development focuses solely on equipment, and does not consider investing in “big data” and cloud-computing applications for transportation.
KMT legislators Lu Hsiu-yen (盧秀燕), Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) and Arthur Chen (陳宜民) said the government should allocate at least NT$10 billion on ensuring food safety.
DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩), one of the committee’s conveners, said that since it took the legislature only two months to approve former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) economic stimulus bills in 2009, the KMT does not have the grounds to question the DPP’s intention to proceed with the special budget.
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