The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) yesterday said that it plans to extend the retirement age for workers in Taiwan from the current 60 years old to 65 years old, to ease the fiscal burden on the social welfare system.
Workers in Taiwan can receive pension benefits starting at 60 years old, and the council plans to gradually extend the age to 65 years old over 10 years, CEPD Deputy Minister Nancy Chen (陳小紅) told reporters yesterday after a cross-department meeting held by the council. The retirement age for civil servants in Taiwan will also be extended, Chen said.
On average, people in Taiwan retire at 55, indicating that a male citizen has to depend on a pension for 17 years on average, and a female citizen for 23 years on average, Chen said.
Meanwhile, the council also plans to ease the regulations for foreign employees, including Chinese employees, to work in Taiwan, as the work force in Taiwan gradually dwindles.
Taiwan is now home to about 470,000 new immigrants, mostly from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.
The council estimates that the workforce in Taiwan numbered 17.3 million last year, and the number will start to decline in 2015 and decrease by half to 9.6 million by 2060, Chen said.
Chen said she will report to the Cabinet about the demographic situation within a week, while the Council of Labor Affairs, Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Education will submit a plan to cope with the situation by the end of this year.
While the raising of the retirement age will increase people’s contributions to the pension fund and reduce pension payments, as well as help stem the bleeding from the various national pension funds, critics have said at least one side effect of this move is that the average age of the labor force will increase, making it more difficult for young people to enter the job market.
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,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
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
RSS