The government has drafted a special bill on a five-year, NT$500 billion stimulus plan aimed at propping up Taiwan's sustainable development, Vice Premier Lin Hsin-i (
"The Cabinet will refer the draft bill to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation before the end of this month," Lin said, adding that he hopes the legislature can approve the special bill as early as possible to facilitate the launch of 10 new major construction projects.
Once the bill clears the legislative floor, Lin said, the Cabinet will come up with a relevant budget bill which will detail how the government will raise funds for the new projects.
According to Lin, the 10 new construction projects will include building three artificial lakes, transforming the existing Taiwan railway into regional mass rapid transit (MRT) systems and constructing industrial parks along the high-speed railway, which is scheduled to become operational in 2005.
Also among the projects are the construction of nursing homes for the elderly, a national arts center in Kaohsiung, a third national theater in northern Taiwan, a Guggenheim museum branch in Taichung, pop-concert halls in various parts of the island, sewers, wind power generators, and new round-the-island highways.
The ambitious stimulus plan also includes upgrading Taiwan's university education system and holding a Taiwan Expo trade fair.
Lin said some of the projects, such as construction of wind power generators, elderly nursing homes, sewers and artificial lakes, will be carried out under a BOT (build-operate-transfer) formula in which private investors will be allowed to construct and operate the projects.
"We are hopeful that the government's NT$500 billion investment will attract another NT$500 billion from the private sector to beef up our overall economic strength," Lin said.
Because of changing economic climates at home and abroad, Lin said, the domestic investment rate has declined steadily over the past three years. Government investment in infrastructure construction has also decreased steadily, from NT$761.9 billion in 1999 to NT$635.5 billion in 2002.
In the face of sluggish domestic demand, Lin said, it is necessary for the country to raise the legal ceiling on public debt to increase public investments and help stimulate domestic demand.
Noting that the IMF has issued a warning that Taiwan may be gripped by deflation, Lin said the government must act quickly to stave off such an adverse scenario.
With Taiwan's population aging, Lin said, the government will encourage private investment in elderly caregiving services. For instance, he said, the Veterans Affairs Commission is expected to provide a piece of land in Ilan for construction of a nursing home for senior citizens.
In an effort to upgrade the quality of life, Lin said, the government will encourage private investments in sewer construction under a BOT formula.
Meanwhile, Lin said yesterday that the government is more than half way to achieving its goal of attracting NT$100 billion (US$2.96 billion) in foreign investment ahead of a investment-promotion conference in late October.
In an interview, Lin said that the government has already approved 107 foreign investment projects with a combined investment value of NT$66 billion (US$1.95 billion). The investment-promotion conference is scheduled for Oct. 19.
In addition, the government has won promises of foreign investment in another 73 projects, with a total investment of NT$71 billion (US$2.1 billion).
The Oct. 19 investment conference is quite different from similar gatherings in the past, because all of the participants are executives of prominent foreign companies with which Taiwan businessmen urgently want to cooperate, Lin said.
At the conference, the government will pitch the island's favorable investment environment in two summits of chief executives and 12 seminars, Lin went on.
In addition to attracting foreign investors, the conference is also designed to persuade Taiwan businessmen operating in China to make Taiwan the headquarters of their business operations.
Lin said the Executive Yuan sets great store in the opinions of Taiwan businessmen investing in China and seeks their advice on national policies regularly in its attempts to improve the local business environment.
As part of its efforts to attract these Taiwanese businessmen, the government is offering cheap land and rent, in addition to soft loans, Lin went on.
The government has budgeted NT$100 billion a year in soft loans for small- and medium-sized business, Lin noted.
In order to provide local companies with sufficient workforce, Lin said the Executive Yuan is trying to ease restrictions on women working at night and giving employers more leeway in arranging shifts for their workers.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods