The Executive Yuan is studying the feasibility of delaying collecting last year's business tax from the tourism industry, which has been hard hit by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
"To make the relief plan fair for all industries affected and not just a particular one, the finance ministry and Council for Economic Planning and Development should hammer out a well-thought out plan which is applicable now and also in the future," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
Yu made the remark during the weekly closed-door Cabinet affairs meeting, in which he listened to the briefing presented by the tourism bureau on the impact of SARS on the tourism industry.
Representatives from the tourism industry on Sunday requested the government exempt their business tax for a year to keep their businesses afloat. They also proposed that the government allocate money from the Employment Stability Fund to those who have lost their jobs or suffered financial losses due to the SARS outbreak.
With the backing of the Cabinet, the bureau will provide subsidies on interest to travel agencies that borrow from banks to cope with SARS' impact.
The ceiling of the loan will be set at NT$1 million and the period of the subsidies will cover one year. The subsidy for the first six months is 3 percent of the interest rate and 1.5 percent for the remaining six months.
The bureau will also return 90 percent of the security deposit of those travel agencies less than two years old. The travel agencies, however, have to return the money within six months. They will eventually get back 90 percent of the deposit two years after their establishment.
To offset losses from the drop-off in China-bound travel, the bureau will encourage the nation's 480,000 civil servants to take domestic trips by taking advantage of the government-backed credit-card travel plan. The plan offers civil servants a NT$16,000 annual subsidy to spend on domestic sightseeing.
The arrangement is expected to create over NT$7 billion in business opportunities for the tourism industry, including the NT$3.8 billion generated by the 240,000 civil servants employed by the central government.
The central government will also encourage its agencies to arrange their annual group travels before August and hope to see local governments follow suit. The annual trip package offers civil servants a NT$6,000 subsidy.
The transportation ministry has already decided to take its some 100,000 staffers on the annual trips in April and May. The arrangement is estimated to create NT$600 million in business opportunities for the tourism industry.
According to Su Cheng-tien (
"The Council for Economic Planning and Development has predicted that the GDP will suffer a drop of between 0.15 percent and 0.25 percent if the outbreak continues for three to six months," Su said.
Statistics show that since the outbreak of SARS, domestic travel has seen a 50 percent decrease. Outbound travel in March has dropped by 20 percent compared with that of the same period of last year. Inbound travel in March also suffered a 5 percent decline compared with that of the same period of last year.
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