H7N9 avian influenza could affect the retail and restaurant sectors — as well as the economy as a whole — if the virus becomes transmissible among humans, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
If the bird flu became more serious and continued for three months, the nation’s GDP is forecast to drop by 0.004 percentage points, Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) said, citing research conducted by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院).
“If more cases [of H7N9 infection] are found, the nation’s economy might be hurt to some degree,” Chang told the legislature’s Economics Committee. “The flu would also hit the nation’s consumption, production and export-related sectors if the flu outbreak gets worse.”
“The ministry has set up a special task force to monitor the situation. We aim to be well-prepared to prevent the disease from spreading,” Chang said.
In addition, local facial mask manufacturers have agreed to increase production to 800,000 masks a day from 500,000, he said, in an attempt to ease concerns over a shortage.
However, lawmakers cast doubts on the ministry’s estimates of economic damage due to H7N9 bird flu.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said that the estimate of “0.004 percentage points is quite small, but there are people saying we should not underestimate the bird flu?”
Taiwan suffered an economic loss of NT$64.3 billion (US$2.18 billion) 10 years ago because of the SARS outbreak, Ting added.
He said the government’s efforts to counter an avian influenza epidemic might be more challenging this time, because the number of people traveling across the Taiwan Strait is now 10 times higher than it was a decade ago.
Citing the institute’s research, Chang said that in the early stages of the outbreak of SARS, H5N1 or H1N1 in the past, the economic impact from the epidemic was “very minimal.”
The government last week decided to advance a ban on the slaughter of live poultry in traditional markets to May 17, from its original date of June 17, as a preventive measure after the nation reported its first confirmed H7N9 infection on Wednesday last week.
Neither Chang nor Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) offered any estimate about the ban’s impact on vendors of live poultry.
Vendors offering live poultry slaughtering at traditional markets are encouraged to sign contracts with legal slaughterhouses and to change their selling practices, Chen told the committee.
In addition, consumers are advised to purchase meat products processed by legal slaughterhouses, he added.
Chen said the government would refund poultry sellers for birds culled for carrying avian influenza, especially H7N9.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
A new worry has been rippling across the stock market lately: Entire businesses, not just their employees, might be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs. The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores. Economists expect AI would deliver higher productivity,
RSS