The Legislative Yuan Budget Center issued a warning that military personnel costs for the next fiscal year are 53.7 percent of the central government’s personnel budget, the highest in the past five years.
The center’s report for last month, titled Evaluation of the Central Government Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2019, said that the Executive Yuan should find additional sources of funding for the nation’s growing defense budget, a call the center also made the previous month.
The central government’s personnel budget for next year is NT$426.7 billion (US$13.8 billion), of which 155.7 billion, or 36.5 percent, is allocated to the Ministry of National Defense, the report said.
When the Veterans Affairs Council’s budget for military pensions are included, the military’s share of the central government’s personnel costs increases to 53.7 percent, it said.
That a majority of the central government’s personnel budget is expended by the ministry reflects “a use of resources that is obviously biased toward a minority of apparatuses and a specific subset of governmental personnel,” it said.
Additionally, the Ministry of National Defense’s operational budget next year of NT$265.7 billion is an annual increase of 26.2 billion, or 10.9 percent, most of which is accounted for by costs associated with the procurement and maintenance of military equipment, it said.
The total cost of military equipment is 45.8 percent of the central government’s operating budget, it said.
The Executive Yuan should take measures to alleviate the concentration of personnel and operational funding going to the ministry, it said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said that since former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration decided to transition to a volunteer military, the problem has been building up and there is no solution for it at the moment.
Should the government continue with the plan for an all-volunteer military, increasing national defense costs are inevitable, Wang said.
“One of the few things we can do would be to maximize the return on the military budget by making precise military investments, and increasing personnel quality and operational efficiency,” he said.
In its report for July, Analysis of Central Government Budget, Expenditures and Allocation of Resources Trends in Recent Years, the center said that the ministry has repeatedly raised salaries and benefits to encourage enlistment, which will increase long-term defense costs.
The government should expand revenue before the military’s personnel costs began to crowd out other public programs, the July report said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS