The Cabinet yesterday expressed its hope of seeing the Legislative Yuan call for a provisional session to review a special bill for an economy-invigorating, five-year, NT$500 billion (US$15.15 billion) public construction package if the bill fails to clear the legislature this session.
"Our priority is to see the legislature pass the bill into law before the session ends next month," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) told a press conference yesterday morning. "If not, we'd like the legislature hold a provisional session to take care of it."
If opposition lawmakers aspire to cut the budget, Lin said, they can and are welcome to do so -- after the bill is passed.
"However, they cannot shun their responsibility of reviewing the bill or voting on it," Lin said. "Regardless of the result of the election controversy, opposition lawmakers should put aside political differences and help push forward national and economic development."
The legislature is scheduled to hold the last cross-party negotiations on the bill on tomorrow. It will be put to a vote by the end of this month if negotiations fail to bear fruit, according to legislative rules.
In a bid to win the support of opposition lawmakers for the bill, Lin said that Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday asked Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
Yu also requested Cabinet Secretary-General Liu Shih-fang (
Topping the list are Kaohsiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh (
If the legislature fails to pass the budget before the session ends next month, Lin said that five of the partially finished public construction projects included in the plan might be delayed. In addition, the Cabinet is required to present the special bill and special budget again during the next legislative session, which is scheduled to reconvene in September.
The five construction projects include the mass rapid transit (MRT) system's expansion projects in Taipei and Kaohsiung, the building of the freeway system in eastern Taiwan, the expansion of the cargo-container center in Kaohsiung harbor, the upgrading of the railway system and road improvement projects for some of the north-south high-speed railway system's stations.
To keep the MRT projects afloat, Lin said that the transportation ministry has proposed two alternative measures.
One of them is to have local governments either divert their financial resources or borrow money from banks and the central government would share the interest. The other possibility is to divert NT$20 billion from state coffers.
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