A proposal to increase the National Pension Insurance premium to inject more money into the system in a bid to meet its statutorily required level for the next 20 years is pending approval, an official said yesterday.
Minister Without Portfolio James Hsueh (薛承泰) said the proposal by the Ministry of the Interior had been sent to Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) for consideration.
Later yesterday, Wu told reporters that “it should not be a problem” for him to sign off on the proposal because the National Pension Act (國民年金法) demanded mandatory compliance with an increase in the premium rate under certain circumstances.
“There is very little flexibility on the matter,” Wu said.
The act stipulates that the premium rate, set at 6.5 percent for the first year of implementation, will be increased 0.5 percent in the third year of implementation and another 0.5 percent every two years thereafter until it reaches a cap of 12 percent.
Exceptions to the formula could be made when the balance of the insurance fund is enough to cover pension payments for the next 20 years, the act says.
Hsueh said an inter-agency meeting was held last week to discuss the matter, where it was concluded that the ministry had acted within its authority to raise the premium rate from 6.5 percent to 7 percent.
The National Pension Insurance System, which came into force in October 2008, was designed for people between the ages of 25 and 64 who are not covered by public functionary insurance, labor insurance or any other public insurance schemes.
Under the current system, an insured person who pays a monthly premium of NT$674 (US$23) for 40 years would receive NT$8,986 every month from the age of 65 until death.
Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) has said the proposal was expected to lead to an increase of NT$2 billion annually, with an increase of between NT$26 and NT$52 in an insured person’s monthly premium.
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that the ministry had also suggested increasing the business tax rate from 5 percent to 6 percent to replenish the insurance fund, a report that was later denied by a Cabinet official.
Statistics from the latest financial statement from the system showed it has been unable to meet expected levels, with potential debt reaching NT$210 billion, the ministry said.
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