The Executive Yuan plans to allocate a NT$6 billion (US$198 million) budget to fund the government’s New Southbound Policy in fiscal 2018, underscoring President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration’s emphasis on the policy.
The Executive Yuan is to discuss and pass the fiscal 2018 budget plan on Thursday before sending the plan to the Legislative Yuan for review, sources said, adding that Premier Lin Chuan (林全) will hold a news conference about the budget following a weekly Cabinet meeting the same day.
To policy has five areas of focus: the cultivation of industrial talent; cooperation in the medical field and the development of an industry chain; boosting cooperation in entrepreneurial industries; fostering regional agricultural development and forming a “new southbound forum”; and the establishment of a platform to encourage interaction among younger people, sources said.
The Executive Yuan plans to set up 16 agricultural demonstration centers in Southeast Asia, sources said, adding that it plans to keep a low profile to prevent Chinese interference.
The budget would be distributed among the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Council of Agriculture and other government agencies, officials said.
The agencies will use the funds to foster talent that would help with the promotion of the policy, the sources said.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet is expected to allocate a budget of NT$331.8 billion to the Ministry of National Defense, increasing NT$10.1 billion from its initial plan.
The increased funding would cover personnel and operations costs, as well as military investments, they said, adding that personnel costs included increased pension and insurance payouts.
The Executive Yuan is expecting an annual income of NT$1.89 trillion in fiscal 2018, up 2.7 percent form this year, sources said, adding that expenditures are expected to reach NT$1.98 trillion, up 0.6 percent from this year.
The budget deficit this year has fallen by NT$38.3 billion from last year, they said.
Social welfare is expected to be the main source of expenditure in fiscal 2018 at NT$489.8 billion, with the defense ministry’s expenditure coming in second, and the Ministry of Education’s expenses coming in third at NT$285.1 billion, sources said, adding that public construction expenses are expected to reach NT$151.5 billion.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: