The Cabinet and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday finalized a draft bill that would allow the government to auction vacant private land in industrial parks in a bid to solve an industrial land shortage.
Land is one of five industrial shortages along with electricity, water, workforce and skilled workers.
The Cabinet on Saturday last week proposed a draft amendment to the Statute for Industrial Innovation (產業創新條例) that stipulates compulsory auction of vacant private land in industrial areas to free more space for factories and businesses.
Photo: CNA
Following days of controversy over the constitutionality of the proposal, it was finalized at a meeting between the Cabinet and the DPP caucus without any substantial changes.
According to the proposal, a vacant property is defined as any land on which no structure is built within three years of its acquisition, Executive Yuan spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
Owners of vacant plots of land would be charged a maintenance fee that is five times the average industrial park maintenance fee and given a two-year grace period to properly utilize the land, Hsu said.
If they fail to comply, they would be given a fine of up to 10 percent of the land’s market value and would have to put forward a plan for the land within a month.
If they still fail to comply, or if negotiations fail, the government could auction the property at a reduced price to the market value, Hsu said.
The two-year grace period cannot be renewed even if a vacant plot is sold before the period expires, meaning that the new owner of the vacant plot would have to utilize the land within the original grace period, he said.
“It is constitutional to limit property rights if they hinder the economy and national development,” Hsu said.
“Property rights come with social responsibility, it is not that property rights cannot be restrained. For example, you cannot build whatever you want on private land, you have to comply with construction and land-use laws,” he said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party lawmakers have criticized the proposal as “authoritarian” and “detrimental to democracy.”
The amendment is to be sent to the legislature for review.
According to the Cabinet, 580 hectares is needed for industrial purposes and the government is working to make 604 hectares available in two years.
Meanwhile, Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) yesterday said the ministry would order the Industrial Development Bureau to speed up the drafting of policy on how to handle idle land, and to propose a grace period between fines and forcible auction.
The bureau also needs to draft a countermeasure to prevent land owners building nonoperational plants on land to deceive the government, Shen said.
“We have to hurry as the Executive Yuan wants us to draft the policy with more details and implement it as soon as possible to alleviate the shortage of land,” Shen told reporters before the ministry’s weekly meeting.
Additional reporting by Lauly Li
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS