To help the aviation industry better cope with the fallout from the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the Executive Yuan said yesterday that it would extend for another year a one-year relief program designed to alleviate the financial difficulties of the domestic aviation industry following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the US.
"While changes to international aviation rules have to adhere to the WTO regulations, we thought it'd be easier to start with the domestic aviation industry," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
According to Oliver Yu (
For domestic airlines, the monthly landing fees, land-rental fees, building-rental fees and hangar-rental fees will be reduced by 50 percent.
As the one-year program expired on Dec. 31 last year, it will be extended until Dec. 31 this year and will retroactive to Jan. 1 this year.
The arrangement will cost an estimated NT$664 million a year.
Domestic airlines can also delay until August paying certain fees, including the aviation-noise prevention fee and security-service fee, for the months of April through July.
In addition, international airlines will be entitled to a 15 percent discount on their landing fee between April 1 and Sept. 30.
The estimated cost of these measures is NT$276 million.
To help the local tourism industry tackle the losses cause by the SARS outbreak, Lin said that the Cabinet did not rule out delaying the collection of business taxes from the industry or exempting it from taxes altogether.
"As the first-stage of the relief scheme is in place, we'll make necessary adjustments in the future in accordance with the development of the global pandemic," Lin said.
Lin also dismissed a media report that there was a disagreement between the Cabinet and the Presidential Office over the taxation policy.
The report said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had asked the government waive taxes for the tourism industry this year.
"There isn't any disagreement over the issue. Our stance is in line with that of the Presidential Office," Lin said.
Industry representatives requested on April 6 that their businesses be exempt from taxes for a year to help keep their businesses afloat.
They also proposed that the government allocate money from the Employment Stability Fund to those who had lost their jobs or suffered financial losses as a result of the SARS outbreak.
With the backing of the Cabinet, the bureau will provide subsidies to travel agencies that borrow from banks to cope with the impact of the epidemic.
The ceiling of the loans will be set at NT$1 million and the period of the subsidies will cover one year. The subsidy will cover 4 percentage points of the interest rate.
The bureau will also return 90 percent of the security deposit of those travel agencies less than two years old. The 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 travel.
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