Cabinet welcomes moves by China

The Executive Yuan welcomed China's proposal yesterday to cooperate with Taiwan to battle severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

"To safeguard Taiwanese people's overall health and protect the nation's dignity, we'll do whatever is conducive to preventing the spread of SARS, including medical cooperation with China," said Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍). "However, we hope cooperation is conducted under the framework of the World Health Organization [WHO]."

Lin also said that China should not consider Taiwan its subordinate.

"It's unacceptable that China accords Taiwan and Hong Kong the same administrative status. It's also inappropriate that China continues to hinder Taiwan from entering the WHO," he said.

Lin made the remarks in response to a statement by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) yesterday. Hu requested that China's health administration provide necessary assistance to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to battle the spread of SARS. Hu also asked that China's health administration join medical experts in Hong Kong and Taiwan to find an effective treatment for the disease and study prevention measures.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) also expressed the Chinese government's interest in cooperating with Hong Kong and Taiwan to control the outbreak.

Addressing a press conference held after the closed-door SARS response meeting yesterday afternoon, Lin called on Beijing to respond to the government's request to provide information on the outbreak in China.

The Straits Exchange Foundation made the request at the end of March to its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.

"I'm calling on the Chinese government to be transparent in sharing information on SARS," Lin said. "I also hope it would welcome a visit from our medical experts to its affected areas to better understand the situation."

Lin said that the premier backed plans to offer financial assistance to the local tourism industry, which has been hard hit by the outbreak.

According to Su Cheng-tien (蘇成田), director-general of the tourism bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the bureau will provide subsidies on interest to travel agencies that borrow from banks to cope with SARS' impact.

The ceiling of the loan will be set at NT$1 million and the period of the subsidies will be one year. The subsidy for the first six months is 3 percent of the interest rate and 1.5 percent for the remaining six months.

The bureau will also return 90 percent of the security deposit of those travel agencies less than two years old. The travel agencies, however, have to return the money within six months. They will eventually get back 90 percent of the deposit two years after their establishment.

To offset losses from the drop-off of China-bound travel, Su said the bureau will encourage the nation's 240,000 civil servants to take domestic trips. Su said the arrangement is expected to create NT$1 billion in business opportunities for the tourism industry.

The bureau, however, will not exempt the tourism industry's business and income taxes because it would require amending existing laws.

Representatives from the tourism industry proposed on Sunday that the government allocate money from the Employment Stability Fund to those who have lost their jobs or suffered financial losses due to the SARS outbreak. They also requested the government exempt their income and business taxes for a year to keep their businesses afloat.