The Executive Yuan’s annual expenditure for fiscal 2019 is expected to total NT$2 trillion (US$65.11 billion), with national defense spending increasing by 2.17 percent, or NT$7.1 billion, compared with fiscal 2018, sources said.
However, despite the increase, total defense spending will not reach President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) promised 3 percent of national GDP, they said.
Current defense spending is less than 2 percent of GDP, although funding for plans to build domestic missile attack boats and purchase M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks could be included, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Minister Chu Tzer-ming (朱澤民) said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Tsai expects a gradual increase in national defense spending that is not lower than an average of the past three years’ total defense spending, Chu said.
Premier William Lai (賴清德) is expected to preside over cross-agency budget meetings tomorrow to finalize budget ceilings for all governmental agencies, Chu said, but added that defense spending would be separated out so that the president could render a final decision.
Social welfare is to be the greatest expenditure for fiscal 2019, and is not expected to fall below the legally defined minimum of NT$490.6 billion, the sources said.
Public construction spending has reached an all-time high over the past eight years at NT$235.8 billion, including NT$140.8 billion for central government affairs, NT$86.2 billion for the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program and NT$8.8 billion for hydraulic engineering efforts, they said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications has earmarked NT$3 billion to NT$6 billion in public construction funding for the maintenance of provincial highways, as well as for highway improvement projects.
The Executive Yuan expects to pass the budget for fiscal 2019 before the middle of next month, before the Legislative Yuan’s September session begins.
The Ministry of Finance is to issue a report on the annual income expected for fiscal 2019, as new taxes are to go into effect, the sources said.
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