Anticipating that the five-year, NT$500 billion special budget for the 10 construction projects package might not pass the legislature by the end of the year, Premier Yu Shyi-kun has pledged to shoulder interest payments should local governments need to borrow money to fund the projects.
"In a bid to continue construction projects [of the five-year plan] which have already kicked off, the premier has promised to pay the interest if local governments need to borrow money to carry on," a Cabinet official who asked not to be named told the Taipei Times yesterday.
While the Cabinet has sent the special bill pertaining to the project to the legislature, it intends to approve the special budget on Wednesday during its weekly closed-door meeting.
The Cabinet plans to borrow NT$500 billion in a special budget to exempt it from limits on the amount the government can borrow. It is also hoping to attract NT$203 billion from the private sector and NT$131.6 billion from local governments that, combined with other sources, would make the project worth more than NT$948 billion.
Confirming the official's statements, Frank Fan (
"That's the answer I got from the premier when I once queried him about the possibility of diverting other resources to fund the city's mass rapid transit [MRT] system should the special budget fail to be endorsed by the legislature by the end of the year," Fan said. "However, I'm afraid I'll have to take his words with a grain of salt because they were not noted down in black on white in the meeting's minutes."
According to Fan, the city does not plan to borrow money to fund the four MRT lines included in the five-year plan.
"We thought it might be a better idea for the central government to make an additional budget request if the special budget is still bogged down in the legislative procedure by the end of the year," Fan said.
The four lines, for which the Cabinet intends to earmark a total of NT$94.8 billion over five years, include the NT$49.4 billion Hsinchuang-Luchou line, the construction of which began in July 2000; the NT$30.4 billion Neihu line (including the Panchao-Tucheng line); the NT$8.2 billion Sungshan line and the NT$6.8 billion Hsinyi line.
The 10 construction projects package encompass four areas: a NT$212.8 billion sustainable ecology project, which makes up 42 percent of total spending; a NT$107.9 billion international competitiveness project (22 percent); a NT$100.6 billion culture and creativity project (20 percent); and a NT$50 billion research and development project (10 percent). The remaining 6 percent will go toward interest payments.
In the NT$107.9 billion international competitiveness segment, the Cabinet plans to spend NT$39.9 billion to upgrade eight segments of the railway system and NT$141 billion to build MRT lines in Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taichung.
The Cabinet also plans to spend NT$43.9 billion building a freeway connecting Suao, Ilan County and Hualien County and many more in other counties.
With the implementation of the five-year plan, the Cabinet hopes to boost the nation's annual economic growth by an average of 1.03 percentage points, create an average of 64,000 jobs each year, and raise the nation's competitiveness ranking to third in the world.
Taiwan ranked first in Asia and fifth in the world in terms of competitiveness, up from sixth last year, according to a World Economic Forum survey of 102 countries.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the