President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) held a meeting with senior economic officials yesterday to discuss joblessness and related issues. At the end of the day the meeting seemed to be yet another exercise in futility -- the same old problems, the same old calls for action. It's hard to see the difference between yesterday's session and those at Ta Shee and Sanchih. Three meetings in three months and there is still no sign that anything effective is being done or even planned.
Chen issued a 10-point statement calling for the unemployment rate to be lowered to 4.5 percent within a year (it was 5.32 percent as of September). He also spoke of targeting an annual NT$1.2 trillion in major investments over the next five year and expanding efforts to attract foreign investment. But then he ordered a halt to the proposed reform of the farmers' and fishermen's cooperatives -- something that just about everyone but venial politicians agree is a priority.
That just about sums up Taiwan's attitude toward reform. Lots of talk about problems and the need for change, lots of advice from academics, formulate a plan, publicize it and then back down when politicians turn up the heat.
Despite repeated assurances from the Ministry of Finance that the government is determined to carry out much needed reforms it appears that no one in a position of authority has either the power or the backbone to press ahead. The finance ministry and the rest of the Executive Yuan are livid with frustration. After such a public U-turns on reforms, what official would ever dare implement policies again?
The biggest economic problems facing the nation are lackluster investor interest, massive capital outflow to China, declining vitality and rising unemployment. The government has repeatedly flipflopped on tackling these problems. It wants more investment, but then it talks about opening direct links with China. It wants to expand investments in infrastructure and implement the "Taiwan priority" investment policy -- but it has yet to come up with a concrete way of blocking capital outflow.
Unemployment has been over 5 percent for more than a year. One would think the government would try to allocate money to provide professional training to the unemployed to help establish them in new careers or provide subsidies to businesses that hire the unemployed. The government can't seem to find the money to fund such programs -- though it spent NT$16.8 billion on stipends for elderly people in order to make good on one of Chen's election promises.
The political motivation behind Chen holding his latest brainstorming session -- just two weeks away from election day -- is just too obvious. This puts the proposals for salvaging the economy under a thick political cloud. They will become a focus of controversy in the remaining days of the campaign, which is a shame. Hopefully the ruling and opposition parties will stop paying lip service to the economy and instead show some sincerity, set aside their political prejudices and cooperate to pull Taiwan out of this economic quagmire.
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