The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it is working on a subsidy program to help struggling restaurants reduce the costs charged by third-party food delivery providers during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The ministry yesterday met with representatives of restaurants, night markets and travel agencies, the third meeting it has held in its attempts to assist the affected sectors during the outbreak.
To mitigate the impact of the outbreak, restaurants have been turning to food delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats, Foodpanda and Deliveroo, to boost sales, but the approach comes at a cost — the providers charge commission fees that are 30 to 40 percent the cost of the delivery.
“We are drafting measures to subsidize commission fees as restaurants are suffering,” Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) told reporters after the meeting. “They [restaurant owners] have been advised to negotiate with [food delivery platforms] to cut the commission fees. Together with government help, they could save money. The ministry can help with this.”
Restaurants are hoping to at least halve the fees, Shen said.
The owners of food stalls in Taipei’s Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市) have reached an agreement with food delivery platforms to cut the commission to 10 to 30 percent, he said.
The ministry has set up a special budget of NT$160 million (US$5.29 million) to subsidize food delivery fees for about 11,000 small restaurants, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported yesterday.
The subsidy would be capped at NT$15,000 for each restaurant, the report said.
At the meeting, the ministry was urged to issue “stimulus coupons” as soon as possible to boost consumption, Shen said.
Businesses also urged the government to cut electricity and water rates, as well as taxes, he said.
They also called on the government to temporarily relax the regulations on working hours to help businesses weather the impact of the outbreak, Shen added.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
RSS