As part of the government’s strategy to boost the economy, Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday set a goal of attracting an additional 3 million foreign tourists within four years, particularly focusing on high-spending visitors, and developing the exhibition and convention industry.
Since 2008, when Taiwan received about 3.84 million tourists, the number of tourists visiting the nation has grown at a rate of 1 million per year, Chen said.
“If the growth rate continues, more than 10 million tourists will visit Taiwan in 2016, up from an achievable goal of 7 million this year,” Chen told a press conference after a closed-door meeting with business leaders and government officials to discuss ways of boosting the economy — the fourth in a series of five symposiums.
According to the government, statistics from the World Tourism Organization show a significant increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting Taiwan, an average growth rate of 16.77 percent between 2009 and last year.
Setting a goal of more than 10 million foreign tourists visiting in 2016, the government expects to generate business opportunities worth more than NT$470 billion (US$15.68 billion) and to create 200,000 jobs by attracting investment from 20 international hotel groups and NT$300 billion in local investment in the next four years.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said the government was looking at the newly rich middle classes in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Brunei and Muslim countries as potential sources of tourists.
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said the government would provide the necessary assistance to help the private sector establish a strong exhibition and convention industry with a view to building Taiwan into the top trade-show destination in Asia.
By 2016, the government hopes that Taiwan can host at least two large-scale trade shows, 215 international conventions and 25 business meetings annually to bring the number of international tourists visiting for business purposes from 152,000 a year to 235,000 a year, while boosting the output of the exhibition and convention industry to more than NT$ 40.4 billion from NT$30 million, he 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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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