Yunlin County is close to being unable to pay either the salaries or year-end bonuses of its 100,000 public servants.
Yilan County has a NT$20 billion (US$669.8 million) debt that is not getting any smaller, while Chiayi County has a NT$3 billion deficit it has not been able to reduce this year.
Those were the stories told by county commissioners as they met in Taipei yesterday, concerned that local counties will be neglected in a large financial restructuring bill aimed at diverting more funds to the four new special municipalities.
“It almost seems fair — determining the amount of government subsidies based on ... population and size, but for counties that are sparsely populated, what it will create is a financial [black hole],” Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻) said.
The special municipalities are to be given significantly more annual funding by the central government. Taipei County, Taichung and Tainan will be upgraded on Saturday, the same day that existing special municipality Kaohsiung is to be merged with neighboring Kaohsiung County.
In the case of Taipei County, Ministry of Finance documents show that it is set to receive NT$46.6 billion in subsidies next year, compared with the NT$23.8 billion it received in 2007. The figure includes a second one-time payment of NT$10 billion associated with the upgrade.
“At the same time that [a special municipality] is focused on how to implement a new luxury tax ... all we are worried about is how we are going to survive past tomorrow,” Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) told a press conference at the legislature.
Earlier in the morning, four commissioners of DPP administered counties, including Yilan’s Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) and Yunlin’s Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬), met with Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) to discuss the proposed changes to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法).
Under the tabled revision, special municipalities are set to receive 61 percent of the money set aside by the central government, up from 43 percent and roughly proportionate with their share of the population.
At the same time, the share given to counties and local municipalities will fall to 24 percent from 39 percent — a figure that the county commissioners yesterday want revised upward.
However, Lee said he believed the bill would be sufficient to help the long-term development targets of local counties. He suggested that local government cut spending, saying that local government debts have been a problem for the past few years.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei MRT is to begin accepting mobile payment services in the fall, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said on Saturday. When the company finishes the installation of new payment units at ticketing gates in October, MRT passengers can use credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, the operator said. In addition, the MRT would also provide QR payment codes — which would be compatible with Line Pay, Jkopay, iPass Money, PXPay Plus, EasyWallet, iCash Pay, Taiwan Pay and Taishin Pay — to access the railway system. Currently, passengers can access the Taipei MRT by buying a single-journey token or using EasyCard,
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