The US arms-procurement package can be partly funded from the government's regular budget instead of from appropriations from a special budget, the Cabinet decided yesterday.
The Cabinet passed a draft budget plan for next year that included NT$7 billion (US$218.8) for the special arms-procurement project.
Of that amount, NT$350 million will be contributed by the Cabinet and the remaining will be from the Ministry of National Defense's regular budget.
Spending level
As a result, the nation's overall defense spending for next year will be NT$253.8 billion, a NT$4.1 billion increase from this year's level and accounting for 15.9 percent of the government's total annual expenditure.
The special arms package calls for an outlay of NT$480 billion. The government originally planned to finance it with a special budget plan to span a period of 15 years.
The bill has been held up in the legislature because of opposition parties' feeling that the cost of the weaponry is too expensive and that any payments ought not come from a special budget.
The Cabinet approved the government's budget plan for next year at its weekly meeting earlier in the day, which projects annual total revenues to be NT$1.4 trillion and annual expenditures of NT$1.6 trillion.
"The budgetary gap is less than in 2005," a budget-planning official said, adding that in addition to using its previous budget surplus, the government will have to float NT$239 billion in state bonds, or 14.8 percent of its total spending, to make ends meet.
Compared with the this year's budget plan, next year's government expenditures will mark a 0.5 percent decrease.
Speaking at the weekly Cabinet meeting, Premier Frank Hsieh (
Disbursements
In next year's budget plan, Hsieh said, disbursements related to the upgrading of national competitiveness and industrial technological development will grow substantially, and spending on the upgrading of living quality and public safety, including physical education, health care, community services, fighting crime and ethnic diversity, will also increase.
"Our 2006 budget plan has given balanced emphasis on economic development, social justice, environmental protection and cultural renaissance," he said.
According to the Cabinet-drafted budget bill, NT$84.3 billion will be appropriated for technological development projects, marking all-time-high growth of 19.7 percent from the year-earlier level.
NT$11.5 billion will be earmarked for a "six-star" community development project, marking 14.2 percent in annual growth. Spending on crime-fighting will surge 6.5 percent and expenditures for welfare services for minority ethnic groups will see a 10.8 percent rise.
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
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
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,