The premier yesterday promised that gas prices will not be changed before the Lunar New Year.
"I assure you that the government will help stabilize domestic inflation," Premier Frank Hsieh (
"Although the international price of oil has reached US$61 per barrel recently, our gas prices will not be changed, at least before the Lunar New Year," he said
The premier made the remarks at a press conference held yesterday morning to report on the Cabinet's performance last month.
The Cabinet has held "monthly report" press conferences since Hsieh took office in February.
The premier asked his fellow Taiwanese not to lack confidence, because they had worked hard and achieved success last year.
But, the figures and statistics also showed that Taiwanese people were not too confident in themselves, he said.
"I had said that there was a great future for Taiwan's economy while the stock market remained at 6,000 points few months ago. Many people did not believe me," Hsieh said.
"Now it has reached 6,500 points; most of the winners are foreign shareholders. A pity," he said.
Meanwhile, in related news, Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (
The Cabinet has set the goal of achieving economic growth of 4.5 percent this year.
During a news show on the nation's economic situation and outlook aired by the Chinese Television System, Ho said that many people were not optimistic about the country's economic performance last year mainly because of soaring international oil prices.
However, Ho said, the government's decision to not raise electricity rates and to keep oil price increases at a reasonable level had been effective in maintaining consumers' spending power.
Although the economy was sluggish in the first half of last year, export orders and exports marked several new highs from August, Ho said.
Disputing public criticism that the nation's industrial sector is hollowing out, Ho said the number of factories in Taiwan increased by 10,000 last year, with the number of people employed at plants rising by 56,000.
She said that the unemployment rate had also dropped below 4 percent in November, and that this proved that the country's industrial sector has not been hollowed out.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching