Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday dismissed concerns over Taiwan’s increasing national debt in response to lawmakers’ worries the country could end up engulfed by a sovereign debt crisis similar to Greece.
Outstanding debts are expected to reach an all-time high of NT$5.269 trillion (US$175.86billion) by the end of next year, accounting for 37.1 percent of average GNP over the past three years, marginally lower than the 40 percent debt limit.
“There is no comparison between the two countries. Greece is a country facing a debt to GDP ratio of more than 100 percent, while our national debt remains under the debt limit,” Chen said.
Chen said the way the government manages debt “has been in compliance with related rules,” refering to the 40 percent debt limit, the 15 percent ratio of annual public debt taken on by national and local governments compared with revenue in the previous fiscal year and the minimum annual payment requirement of no less than 5 percent of annual tax revenues.
In terms of the stock of debt capped under the 40 percent debt ceiling “there is still room for loans to grow by approximately NT$400 billion,” he said.
Chen said that Greece would be satisfied if it were able to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio below 100 percent, but as for Taiwan, “we have to obey the rules.”
The draft budget for next year publicized on Thursday showed that the fiscal shortfall for the year stood at NT$214.4 billion, a decline of NT$7.9billion, or 3.4 percent, compared with the previous year.
It was the fourth consecutive year that saw the nation’s fiscal shortfall drop, showing that the government has begun to address the deficit problem, Chen said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching