While lawmakers failed to reach a consensus over the five-year, NT$500 billion (US$15.15 billion) public-construction package during yesterday's interparty negotiations, Premier Yu Shyi-kun called on Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to discuss the matter with him face to face.
"Now the election is over, I hope the opposition camp will concentrate more on the nation's construction projects and cooperate with the ruling party," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
"I hope Speaker Wang will use his political stature to help push the passage of the five-year plan, which can serve as a great opportunity for the ruling and opposition parties to reconcile," the premier was quoted as saying during the weekly closed-door Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.
Wang has previously refused to meet with Yu, noting that the special bill for the plan's budget was still under negotiation and that the premier and the rest of the Cabinet would soon resign en mass ahead of next month's presidential inauguration.
Wang has said a face-to-face meeting would be meaningless and unnecessary.
Although the Cabinet would soon resign, Lin said yesterday that the national construction projects should not be allowed to come to a halt, especially those important and urgent in nature.
"The legislature and the Cabinet can wait, but local governments, the public and the nation's competitiveness cannot," Lin said. "We won't give up any opportunity to continue to communicate with Wang, opposition lawmakers and regional chiefs."
Many parts of the five-year plan are local public-construction projects designed to boost regional economies.
The Cabinet hopes the plan will boost the nation's economic growth rate from last year's 3.15 percent to 5 percent this year and cut the jobless rate from the 5 percent posted last year to 4.5 percent this year.
The plan is expected to create 64,000 jobs each of its five years.
While yesterday's interparty negotiations failed to bear fruit, lawmakers agreed to hold a public hearing next Wednesday to hear opinions from experts and aca-demics about the bill.
The plan will be put to a vote if lawmakers fail to reach a consensus on Wednesday.
Although the Cabinet has contingency measures mapped out if the legislature fails to approve the plan, Lin said that passage of the special bill and budget would be the best result.
To keep two of the plan's projects afloat -- the MRT projects in Taipei and Kaohsiung -- the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has proposed two alternatives. One is to have local governments either divert some of their financial resources to pay for the projects or borrow money from banks, with the central government sharing the interest payments.
The second possibility is to divert NT$20 billion from the central government's coffers.
The Cabinet has said that five of the partially finished public-construction projects in the plan might be delayed if the legislature fails to pass the budget before its current session ends next month.
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