The national defense budget increase proposed by the Executive Yuan for fiscal 2018 is to be largely spent on personnel, while funding for equipment purchases is to be decreased by NT$5 billion (US$164.8 million), a Ministry of National Defense senior official said.
The budget was separated into personnel, operational and equipment purchase costs, with personnel costs being the largest spending category in the past few years, increasing to NT$147 billion in fiscal 2017, the source said.
Personnel costs are expected to stand at NT$4.5 billion, with an additional NT$2.5 billion budgeted for pension payouts due to an increasing deficit in pension reserves, the source said.
Estimated at NT$154 billion, personnel costs are expected to take 46 percent of the ministry’s budget next year, the source added.
The source said that the ministry deducted military equipment purchases to satisfy growing personnel costs, comparing the estimated NT$78.8 billion in fiscal 2018 with the NT$83.7 billion in fiscal 2017.
The defense budget is the No. 1 expenditure in fiscal 2018 at NT$331.8 billion, or 16.71 percent of the total annual budget. The Ministry of Education is No. 2 at NT$240 billion, or 12.09 percent, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare is No. 3 at NT$217.9 billion, or 10.98 percent, the Executive Yuan said.
The Council of Agriculture received the largest budget bump, up by 10.61 percent at NT$12.6 billion. The defense ministry budget is to increase by 3.91 percent to NT$12.5 billion, and the health ministry budget is to increase by 3.97 percent to NT$8.3 billion, the Executive Yuan said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ budget is to decrease by 25.84 percent, or NT$28.4 billion, while the Ministry of Science and Technology’s was slashed by NT$7.1 billion, or 14.16 percent, the Executive Yuan said.
Central government subsidies to municipalities, counties and cities have been slashed by NT$4.2 billion, or 2.57 percent, the Executive Yuan added.
Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party legislators said that the defense budget increase showed that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration was concerned with national defense, despite the budget allocation not reaching 3 percent of GDP.
The necessary funding would be allocated should the military’s all-volunteer service program, arms-purchase deals and indigenous planes and ships be successful, DPP legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.
Additional reporting by Tseng Wei-chen
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
RSS