Some key arms procurements from the US would be delayed by a few years because the Ministry of National Defense does not have sufficient funds, a legislator yesterday said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), who sits on the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, said in a press statement that according to the ministry, Taiwan’s procurement of six PAC-3 missile launching systems from the US would be delayed from 2014 to 2017, while the procurement of 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters would be delayed from 2016 to 2019.
Four launchers were authorized for sale in 2008, while the helicopters and two other launchers were part of a US$6.4 billion arms package notified to the US Congress in January. As the letter of agreement contracts for those items have already been signed, however, it remains to be seen whether this would affect delivery.
Lin said the delays were caused by a military budget shortage and the nation’s financial difficulties.
Lin also requested in the legislature that the ministry not earmark large budgets for arms procurement from the US, as this could undermine domestic programs.
According to military budget plans, Lin said, the ministry has earmarked a total of NT$330.7 billion (US$10.74 billion) in arms procurements from next year to 2014, averaging NT$82.7 billion per year. Of this budget, the military has earmarked NT$201.1 billion, or 61 percent of the total procurement budget, for arms purchases from the US, or NT$50.3 billion per year.
Lin said the share of domestic procurement should be maintained at between 40 percent and 50 percent of the overall arms procurement budget. The legislator said the ministry had earmarked NT$4 billion for procurement plans for F-16C/D fighter aircraft and diesel submarines from the US. However, as it is unlikely Taiwan will be able to obtain them in the near future, the ministry should not allocate large budgets for them, Lin said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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
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,
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