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.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,