The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday unveiled a plan for a “sensible economy” it said would revitalize Taiwan’s stagnant economic development, improve people’s livelihood and rival the President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s “out of touch” stimulus plan.
The party proposed measures to strengthen industry, empower local governments, improve household finance and create jobs for young people in an action plan outlined at a press conference yesterday.
The press conference was co-hosted by Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), convener of the DPP’s ad hoc economic measures task force, Policy Research Committee executive director Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), Lin Wan-yi (林萬億), the executive director of the DPP’s think tank, and party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
The DPP has been working on the plan for more than a month and announced the package two days before the legislature votes on a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet tomorrow and one day after Ma retained his economic officials in a controversial partial Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday.
The party said the partial reshuffle was unacceptable and the president has ignored the real problem — the economy.
Citing a well-known phrase popularized by former US president Bill Clinton — “It’s the economy, stupid” — Joseph Wu said the action plan was the DPP’s response to Ma’s poor economic performance.
The DPP called for the empowerment of local governments by increasing their fiscal authority, amending the tax code to increase local revenues and putting local governments in charge of industrial parks across the country, Joseph Wu said.
In terms of improving industrial competitiveness, Wu Rong-i said, the government should rebuild Taiwan’s once proud manufacturing sector by transforming it into a value-added sector, increase the size of the credit guarantee fund for small to medium-sized enterprises (SME), help SMEs with brand-building and rebuild the vocational education system.
Thresholds on inflation and the consumer price index should be established so the government could adopt policies to stabilize household finances, Lin said, adding that public child care and long-term care systems should also be established.
The DPP called for the establishment of a subsidy plan to provide employers who hire people between the age of 18 and 24 with a subsidy of 20 percent of the initial monthly salary, or up to NT$6,000 per month, Lin said. They also said the plan could give employers a subsidy of 10 percent of the monthly wage if they extended hiring process of young people after one year, he said.
The government should provide customized employment consulting to unemployed people and create a crowd funding program to encourage young people with micro venture capital entrepreneurship, Lin said.
Ker urged Taiwanese to support the no-confidence motion against the Cabinet, because the administration has been unable to spur the struggling economy.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods