With the national annuity program is scheduled to go into effect next year, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday that the government will invest the fund in the stock market to produce more capital.
Chen said the government will implement a proposal he made in 2000 to use the labor pension fund and national annuity fund more flexibly and distribute the profits earned to all investors.
"In other words, all payees of the national annuity program are the investors, the shareholders and the common beneficiary of Taiwan's economic development," Chen said as he met winners of the ninth Security and Futures Awards at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon.
The Supervisory Commission of the Labor Retirement Fund is set to tap into the investment market by the end of the year and the futures trust fund is scheduled to be in operation by the fourth quarter.
The president said that these programs were expected to provide dynamic energy to the stock market.
Chen said the TAIEX has performed impressively this year, with the bourse on average staying around the 9,000 mark -- which is about where it was when he was first elected seven years ago.
Turnover on the bourse has increased by 80 percent over the past seven years, from NT$1.2 trillion (US$36.3 billion) in May 2000 to NT$2.2 trillion this year, he said, while the number of companies trading on the stock market has grown from 470 to 678.
Among them, electronic companies have grown almost threefold from 106 to 303, he said.
Foreign investment has risen seven fold from 3.4 percent in 2000 to 22.8 percent this year, proving the international market has attached great importance to Taiwan's stock market, Chen said.
The financial services sector is a knowledge-intensive industry, Chen said, and talent is the most important asset in the financial industry.
The Security and Futures Award honors model operators of securities, futures and investment trusts as a way of promoting the development of the market. Since the inauguration of the award in 1996, 127 of the roughly 60,000 professionals in the sector have been honored with the award.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
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