The budget for fiscal 2001 was finally passed by the legislature yesterday at 2:35am. But the finalized budget had been slashed by the highest amount for five years.
Later in the morning, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
PHOTO: SOONG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The final 2001 budget had been reduced by NT$32.7 billion or 2.1 percent, which included NT$1.5755 trillion in annual expenditure and NT$1.38 trillion in annual revenues.
"The Cabinet will make good use of every penny approved since there is no way of restoring the budget cuts already passed [in the legislature]," Chang said yesterday morning during an inspection tour of earthquake-hit areas in central Taiwan.
Bloomberg reported yesterday that the new budget increased the planned deficit to NT$195 billion from the government's original NT$149 billion. This will bring the deficit to 14.6 percent of gross expenditure; almost reaching the 15 percent ceiling imposed by Taiwan's public debt law.
Chang added that he would conduct further negotiations with the legislature since additional restrictions were also passed yesterday along with the budget bill. The additional restrictions will freeze the use of some allocations in the bill.
The current legislative session has now come to an end and the next session will not start until mid-February.
Director-General Lin Chuan (林全) of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics urged the legislature to lift the restrictions as soon as possible so that the distribution of funds to local governments and Academia Sinica would not be further delayed.
According to Lin, a total budget allocation of approximately NT$4.4 billion for research and projects proposed by Academia Sinica will be frozen until its president, Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), delivers a report to the legislature during the next legislative session.
As that session will not begin until mid-February, Lin said, the nation's top research institute risks running into "operational difficulties."
Also, NT$95.1 billion in subsidies to local governments and the tax redistribution fund (
Lin said that he believed that the bureaucratic nature of the system for distributing funds would hamper the allocation of money to areas of pressing need, such as healthcare and elderly pension programs in local governments.
"We hope we will have opportunities to communicate with the legislature soon," Lin added.
Expressing his thanks, Lin said that the Cabinet would implement the budget based on the spirit of a zero-based budget (
Some budget allocations, which the KMT-dominated legislature previously threatened to curtail, were restored. They included the budget for the president's special secretaries (國務機要費) and the Cabinet's special secretaries (行政機要費), the vice president's accommodation allowance, and budgets allocated for the Cabinet-level Science and Technology Advisory Group (行政院科技顧問組) and Aviation Safety Council (飛安預算).
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