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THSRC must add new directors by January: minister

The Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) must hold an extraordinary shareholder's meeting to confirm three additional board directors by January at the latest, Minister of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) Lin Ling-san (林陵三) said yesterday.

Lin's remarks come after the recent postponement by one year of the completion date for the nation's first high-speed railway.

The railway is now scheduled to be finished in October next year, with the delay being blamed on financing and technical problems -- including difficulties related to the integration of the core mechanical and electric system supplied by the Japan-based Taiwan Shinkansen Consortium.

The Executive Yuan last month asked two government-related bodies -- the China Aviation Development Foundation (CADF) and China Technical Consultant Inc (CTCI) -- to provide funds of NT$4.5 billion (US$134 million) and NT$3 billion, respectively to help bail out the project.

At that time, the Executive Yuan also reached an agreement with the THSRC that three directors -- including two appointed by the government and one chosen through consultations between the government and the THSRC -- would be added to the THSRC board to step up monitoring of the company.

Lin said that two of the board directors might come from the CADF and CTCI, while the third may be "a just person jointly recommended by the THSRC and the MOTC."

The THSRC currently has 12 board directors, with two being government representatives from state-owned Taiwan Sugar Corp and the Executive Yuan Development Fund.

Since the new directors will have to be confirmed at a shareholder's meeting, the MOTC had expressed hoped that the meeting could be held in the middle of this month.

However, the THSRC reportedly said that it would require about two months to prepare for such a meeting, and that January would be the earliest that the meeting could be held.

As the regular shareholder's meeting is usually held in May, and the period of time between the regular meeting and extraordinary meeting is so short, "there is no need to convene an extraordinary meeting," according to the reports.

Meanwhile, while reviewing the MOTC's budget for the next fiscal year legislators from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party criticized the THSRC for not convening an early provisional shareholder's meeting, and told Lin to toughen his stance with the company.

Lin said that his basic stance was that the company should build the high-speed railway well.

He added that THSRC chairwoman Nita Ing (殷琪) had taken the initiative to contact him by telephone on Tuesday.

During the phone conversation, Lin said that he had insisted that the shareholder's meeting be held by January at the latest and said Ing had accepted the suggestion.

The multimillion-dollar high-speed railway system is the country's first infrastructure project to be built under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, in which private investors build the system and then return control of the project to the government after a specified period of operations.

The 345km high-speed railway linking Taipei and Kaohsiung will form the backbone of western Taiwan's mass rapid transportation network.

Travel time between Taipei and Kaohsiung is expected to be cut to 90 minutes after the railway is inaugurated.

The high-speed railway will connect eight metropolitan areas between the country's two largest cities and will be able to transport a minimum of 300,000 passengers per day when it becomes fully operational.
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