Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday said the central government should request additional funding for outlying islands because a national fund ensuring their development had sunk dangerously low.
Twenty-two KMT legislators, including Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) and Tsao Erh-chang (曹爾忠), proposed that the government request a minimum budget of NT$3 billion (US$100,000) per year for the Offshore Islands Development Fund (離島建設基金) to facilitate construction on the nation’s outlying islands and ensure the sustainability of the fund.
The fund was established in 2001 with the stipulation that its financial resources should remain at NT$30 billion.
Under Article 16 of the Offshore Islands Development Act (離島建設條例), the government must help the fund ensure that this level is maintained by requesting annual budgets for a period of 10 years if necessary.
The government reached the goal by earmarking about NT$3.2 billion every year between 2001 and last year, and NT$1.2 billion this year.
However, about NT$3 billion was spent annually between 2001 and 2005, and about NT$1.2 billion per year between 2006 and this year, to subsidize construction projects on the islands.
The legislators said they were concerned about the financial status of the fund, as less than NT$10 billion remained after the expenditures from the past decade.
Tsao told the Executive Yuan’s Offshore Islands Development Committee last month that the fund could be completely consumed in four years if the government failed to appropriate new budgets for the fund.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has previously promised to seek the budget request. He said that construction projects on the outlying islands would not be affected by the budget concerns.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS