The prevalence of counterfeit cash in Taiwan's financial system topped the Consumers' Foundation's (
"It's so rampant that Taiwan has been labeled Asia's No. 1 kingdom for fake money," the foundation's chairman Yu Ming-kuo (游明國) said yesterday at a press conference, adding that its prevalence makes the public vulnerable.
While revealing the foundation's top ten stories of the year, Yu urged the government to address the counterfeit issue by giving stiffer penalties to those convicted of the crime.
Rounding out the next three slots in the report were Taiwan's WTO accession, rice-wine hoarding and credit card fraud.
The foundation said yesterday that the nation's upcoming WTO entry would negatively impact the agricultural sector and initiate new consumption patterns.
Yu said that he expects to see more agricultural products being imported from China after March and that some 20,000 farmers will likely be forced to quit their profession.
As the price of rice wine is slated to increase from NT$21 to NT$120 after Taiwan's accession to the world trade body, illegal hoarding of the popular cooking ingredient was a major issue this year.
Credit card fraud was listed as the No. 4 story on yesterday's list. In May, Taiwan was ranked as the country with the second highest rate of credit card fraud in the world.
In that same month, the Criminal Investigation Bureau busted the world's largest fake credit card ring ever, seizing 160,000 fake credit cards, according to the National Credit Card Center and MasterCard.
The foundation said yesterday that the fraudulent credit cards were what consumers complained about the most this year.
"Taiwan has broken the record among all Asia-Pacific countries by having reached a total of NT$3 billion in credit card fraud in 2000," said foundation board member Hanson Chiang (
Chiang said that over the past year, most disputes the foundation handled involved credit card users who were levied unfair interest rates or charged for products they did not buy.
Chiang also used yesterday's press conference to warn fixed-telephone line consumers to be careful when examining rate discounts.
He said that the four major fixed-line operators' commercials have confused consumers.
"Most users do not know that the discounted rate is only good for off-peak hours," Chiang said.
Chiang added that many consumers this year also frequently complained about unclear telecommunications charges on their mobile phone bills.
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