Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) yesterday defended the government's record on the economy as opposition lawmakers criticized the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration for slowing economic development.
"We have been driving backwards instead of moving forward over the past seven years," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Teh-fu (林德福) said during a question-and-answer session at the legislature yesterday morning.
Lin said that a majority of Taiwanese were now poorer than their South Korean counterparts because of inflation and the government's failure to boost the economy over the last seven years.
"I don't think that is accurate," Chang said. "The average annual economic growth rate has been steady at around 4 percent over the past few years. Criticizing the government as slowing down the nation's economic development is not fair at all."
Chang said that the government had worked hard to save on expenditures to bring down its annual budget.
Meanwhile, Minister of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Hsu Jan-yau (許璋瑤) said Taiwanese and South Koreans' income should not be compared by looking at absolute numbers alone.
"Their [South Korea's] currency exchange rate went up 25 percent over the past few years while ours remained steady. As a result, Taiwanese actually pocketed more than their South Korean counterparts," Hsu said.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
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