The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday announced plans to raise electricity rates on all sectors by between 8 and 37 percent to reflect soaring energy costs and curb losses at state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電).
Starting on May 15, electricity prices will rise by an average of 17 percent for households, 30 percent for commercial establishments and 35 percent for industrial users, the ministry said in a report.
“No government in the world can maintain low electricity rates through subsidies for long,” Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) told a press conference, one day after the ministry’s advisory committee on electricity prices failed to reach a conclusion on the issue.
Taipower would incur NT$10 billion (US$338.83 million) in losses a month if the price adjustments were delayed, Shih said.
The state-owned firm has kept electricity prices unchanged since 2008 and accumulated NT$132.2 billion in net losses as of the end of February, he said.
Currently, electricity costs an average of NT$2.82 per kilowatt hour, while Taipower supplies it at NT$2.6 per kilowatt hour, he said.
Fuel and procurement outlays make up 70 percent of the company’s expenditure, while personnel costs account for 14 percent, Shih said, adding that he was aware of criticism of overgenerous compensation packages for Taipower executives and employees.
“The ministry has set up a task force to review the firm’s salary and procurement policies and all government offices are required to reduce electricity consumption,” Shih said.
Continuing electricity subsidies is both unfair for light users and detrimental to the development of energy conservation, he said.
The new rates are more fair, meaning heavier users incur the highest price hikes, Energy Bureau Director-General Jerry Ou (歐嘉瑞) said.
Under the new rate scheme, electricity prices will stay flat for about 3.65 million households that consume 120 kilowatt hours or less a month, while rates will rise 7.8 percent for 5.66 million households that consume between 120 kilowatt hours and 235 kilowatt hours, the report indicated. For households that consume between 500 kilowatt hours and 620 kilowatt hours per month will see their electricity bills increase by between 16 and 19 percent, the report said.
Electricity rates for households that consume 1,000 kilowatt hours or more a month will rise by 24 percent or more. The progressive rates also apply to commercial establishments, which will see their electricity bills increase by between 16 percent and 33 percent a month depending on the energy they consume, Ou said.
The manufacturing industry will bear the brunt with price rises ranging between 29 and 37 percent, because they are relatively heavy users, the energy official said.
The price hikes are expected to raise overall production costs by 0.48 percent, with electricity bills accounting for about 2.19 percent of the industrial sector’s spending, the report said.
New electicity prices will rise to 6.07 percent of production costs for mineral product makers, from current 4.93 percent, while growing from 1.93 percent to 2.38 percent for electronics makers, the report said.
Electricity outlays will rise to 2.37 percent of production costs for flat-panel makers, from the current 1.92 percent and up from 1.42 percent to 1.75 percent for solar-energy suppliers, the report said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has