To recreate the nation’s “economic miracle,” President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that his government would increase the National Development Fund to NT$1 trillion (US$31.25 billion) and use the money to invest in the “2.5 industry,” a business straddling the manufacturing and service sectors.
“When we are able to reduce the external risk, we are much more able to create maybe a new miracle for Taiwan’s economy,” Ma said in English while addressing an international forum on capital venture at the International Convention Center in Taipei.
Ma said the rapid decline in the country’s manufacturing industry was a serious matter. About 20 years ago, Ma said the manufacturing industry represented 40 percent of the total economy, but the figure has gone down to 22 percent, while in other countries such as South Korea and Singapore it accounts for about 30 percent.
“Certainly, we are very interested in developing our service industry, but the manufacturing industry continues to be the biggest providers [sic] of jobs in our economy,” he said. “So we hope in the future we could develop our manufacturing industry in the form of something between the secondary industry. People sometimes call it the ‘2.5 industry.’ It’s not second, it’s not third. It’s in-between. It’s a very professional service industry between manufacturing and service.”
Ma said the government would augment the National Development Fund from NT$200 billion to NT$1 trillion, adding that the money would be invested in strategic industries. The “2.5 industry” would be the potential target, he said.
Ma said the country had felt the pinch of the global economic downturn and that its economic growth rate had slowed in the third quarter.
The current quarter and the first quarter of next year are expected to see negative growth, he said.
“But we are relatively confident that we would make a comeback sometime [in] the latter part of next year,” he said. “We are pretty confident that the fundamentals of our economy remain sound. Our foreign exchange reserve stands at US$280 billion. The most important thing is that we have very little foreign debt.”
Among the government plans to stimulate the economy, Ma said the infrastructure construction project package aimed at increasing domestic demand and the distribution of the NT$3,600 in consumer vouchers is estimated to boost the GDP by 0.64 percent next year.
They are also mapping out a new proposal, dubbed “forward-looking domestic market,” he said, with the object of creating a better environment for industries of mobile and wireless communications and new-generation display technology.
Ma said “how the greater Chinese area in this part of the world performs” will be important.
“I’m sure with our efforts that I described above, we will be able to get us out of this situation next year, hoping to create another economic boom,” he said. “But I know we still have a long way to go and many battles to fight.”
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS