Taipei gets its money after marathon budget debate

After a 35-hour marathon round of discussions, Taipei councilors finally reached a consensus on some of the controversial issues relating to the city's annual budget for the next financial year.

The process was expected to continue through today and to conclude by early tomorrow morning.

The Taipei City Government has proposed a NT$158.8 billion annual budget for next year -- 9 percent less than this year, a record reduction since Taipei was upgraded to a special municipality in 1968.

Controversial issues in the budget include bus fare subsidies, the city's third landfill, a sidewalk overhaul, the construction of a cable car system in Peitou District, and funding the collection of domestic perishable garbage and its reprocessing, all of which are Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) election promises.

Since Ma has pledged not to raise bus fares for eight years, in two four-year terms as city mayor, the city has proposed to allocate NT$1.34 billion for the bus system and NT$735 million for the transfer bus system to subsidize the potential losses.

As of press time, two proposed budgets passed the second reading last night under the condition that no more subsidies will be allowed for the 2002 financial year.

To better integrate the new garbage disposal program which was implemented on July 1 this year, the city has proposed earmarking NT$16 million for the construction of the city's third landfill, whose exact location has not yet been finalized. The proposed budget for this item passed the second reading on condition the location is finalized before funding is made available.

The proposed budget of NT$10 million for the domestic perishable reprocessing scheme was reduced to NT$5 million, while the NT$3 million resource recycling subsidy fund was entirely scrapped.

The NT$1.6 billion for the overhaul of the city's sidewalks was reduced to NT$1.15 billion.

The proposed NT$130 million land acquisition fee for the city's first cable car system in Peitou District was discarded, while the NT$3 million construction fee was granted as requested. However, the funding will not be available until the Bureau of Public Works conducts an environmental impact assessment favoring the construction project.

The budget cut was widely seen as the result of the city's inadequate tax income and because of reductions in central government revenue transfers via the tax redistribution fund.

The central government rejected the city's efforts to retain a 47 percent share of the tax redistribution fund revenue for the two special municipalities of Taipei and Kaohsiung and lowered the cities' share to 43 percent.

Although over NT$59 billion or 38 percent of the NT$156 billion fund comes from Taipei City coffers, only NT$49.3 billion or about 32 percent has been given back to the city in return.