Although many economists and research institutions have issued warnings over potential fallout from the eurozone debt crisis and its impact on Taiwan’s economic outlook during the first quarter of this year, Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said domestic economic prospects might be looking up.
In an interview with the -Chinese-language United Evening News on Saturday, Wang said that some foreign orders had been switched from China to Taiwan, because wages in China are rising and labor shortages are becoming more serious.
She said that unemployment could fall below 4 percent this year, even though the Council for Economic Planning and Development has projected a jobless rate of 4.2 percent.
Wang said she had met with academics and industry executives to get a better understanding of the domestic economic situation.
“Through such talks, I have been made aware that our first quarter economic performance might be better than expected thanks to the ‘switching orders’ effect,” Wang said, referring to export orders that have been transferred to Taiwan from China.
On the manufacturing sector’s call for the delinking of migrant workers’ salaries from minimum wage regulations, Wang reaffirmed her opposition to such a move.
“Although quite a few local companies have singled out delinking migrant workers’ wages from our mandated minimum wage as a condition for them to undertake new investment projects at home or transfer their China production lines back to Taiwan, the council will not agree to such a request,” Wang said.
For one thing, such a move would draw protests from international human rights groups and migrant workers associations, she said.
In addition, Taiwan will not always be able to rely on cheap labor and should therefore focus on industrial upgrading, Wang said.
The council announced after the Lunar New Year holiday that the minimum hourly wage would be raised to NT$115, representing an increase of more than 11 percent from the current level.
The new minimum hourly wage would take effect next year, Wang said.
As to whether the monthly minimum wage would be adjusted this year, Wang said that barring unexpected developments, the council was focusing on the range of the adjustment, hinting that the minimum monthly wage could be adjusted upward.
The minimum monthly wage was increased 5.03 percent to NT$18,780 in July last year.
The new hourly and monthly wage hike plans are part of the government’s efforts to ensure that local wage earners enjoy more of the fruits of domestic economic growth, Wang 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
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
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,