Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) yesterday said the country’s economic growth rate should turn positive in the fourth quarter this year if economic trends continued.
Liu made the remarks at a press conference on the eve of his one year anniversary as premier.
However, he said it was “unlikely that the economic growth rate for [the full] year will turn positive ... If the economic rebound continues after the third quarter, maybe we will have a smaller negative growth for the year ... but it’s difficult.”
“The original goal of negative growth of 2.97 percent this year was not an easy shot in the first place,” Liu said when asked whether he had altered his outlook for the economy in view of recent signs of economic recovery.
Liu said he expected positive economic growth in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter of next year if the fourth quarter went as expected.
As to whether the government would consider extending for another year a 100 percent state guarantee on all bank deposits, Liu said this was under deliberation by a team led by Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄).
“We will stop the full guarantee if the measure is deemed unnecessary and will not prolong the program just because we wanted to see it extended,” Liu said.
Liu said the guarantee was the policy he was most satisfied with over the past year as it had stabilized the financial market without costing the government a penny, while the US government had spent US$300 billion and the UK government £80 billion (US$124 billion) to help their economies.
Asked if the government’s plan to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China would be on the agenda for the fourth round of cross-strait talks scheduled for later this year, Liu said talks on the issue did not necessarily need to be held in the form of negotiations between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
“There are various channels between the two sides of the Strait, formal or informal ... It’s not important whether the ECFA is on the agenda for the fourth cross-strait talks,” Liu said.
Liu also said the government was talking with China on further lowering the minimum number of people per Chinese tourist group from five persons to three or two.
The minimum threshold was lowered from 10 to five people in January.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods