Household water only costs NT$10 per tonne in Taiwan. Extraneous figures notwithstanding, this makes the nation’s water prices the third-lowest in the world.
Not only does Taiwan Water Corp (Taiwater) have difficulty covering its costs, but for decades, it has failed to achieve the legal 5 percent minimum rate of return. It must be frustrating for the company not to be able to set its own prices.
Taiwan has a water leakage rate of about 13.9 percent, putting it among the top 10 percent of large metropolises around the world. Although the leakage rate is not particularly serious in itself, low water prices mean that Taiwater lacks the financial resources to upgrade water pipes to more efficient, larger versions made of better quality materials with a longer service life.
This is regrettable in a nation with as few natural water reserves as Taiwan. For decades, Taiwater has found it impossible to turn a profit, or accumulate the funds to effect the needed upgrades. Given the legislative supervision, as well as criticism in the media and among the public, of water leakage, it is time to re-evaluate the policy for setting water prices.
Adjustments to the prices of water, electricity and gas have a direct impact on people’s lives, and always lead to legislative clashes and controversies fanned by the media — to the extent that chief executives resign and finance ministers are asked to step down, regardless of which political party is in power.
The administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) oversaw a sudden hike in gas prices without seeming to consider the condition of the state coffers or the disapproval of the public, which caused support for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and Ma’s own approval rating, to plummet.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a war-ravaged Tokyo was left with a water leakage rate of more than 80 percent. After almost two decades of infrastructure improvement projects, the rate was reduced to 23 percent, in time for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
Tokyo has continued to improve its water system and lower the leakage rate. A project over the span of 50 years had by 2019 reduced the rate to 3 percent, the lowest in the world.
Two crucial reasons account for this success.
First, the price of household water was in 1975 raised by 160 percent, improving the finances of the Tokyo Bureau of Waterworks, and allowing it to replace pipes with better quality ones and modernize the water system.
Second, in 1980, the city introduced a program that provided homeowners with stainless steel replacement pipes, using a patented technology, so that pipes would not cause water loss due to earthquakes.
Taiwater is responsible for supplying water to the whole nation through a pipe network that spans more than 64,000km. More than 30,000km of the network is comprised of old polyvinyl chloride pipes, which the company cannot replace due to its financial situation.
If the water problem is to be solved, the low price of water — NT$10 per tonne — must be reviewed.
Kuo Chun-ming is chairman of the Chinese Taiwan Water Works Association.
Translated by Paul Cooper
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
Japan’s imminent easing of arms export rules has sparked strong interest from Warsaw to Manila, Reuters reporting found, as US President Donald Trump wavers on security commitments to allies, and the wars in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons supplies. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party approved the changes this week as she tries to invigorate the pacifist country’s military industrial base. Her government would formally adopt the new rules as soon as this month, three Japanese government officials told Reuters. Despite largely isolating itself from global arms markets since World War II, Japan spends enough on its own
On March 31, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released declassified diplomatic records from 1995 that drew wide domestic media attention. One revelation stood out: North Korea had once raised the possibility of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In a meeting with visiting Chinese officials in May 1995, as then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) prepared for a visit to South Korea, North Korean officials objected to Beijing’s growing ties with Seoul and raised Taiwan directly. According to the newly released records, North Korean officials asked why Pyongyang should refrain from developing relations with Taiwan while China and South Korea were expanding high-level
Swiftly following the conclusion of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) China trip, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office unveiled 10 new policy measures for Taiwan. The measures, covering youth exchanges, agricultural and fishery imports, resumption of certain flights and cultural and media cooperation, appear to offer “incentives” for cross-strait engagement. However, viewed within the political context, their significance lies not in promoting exchanges but in redefining who is qualified to represent Taiwan in dialogue with China. First, the policy statement proposes a “normalized communication mechanism” between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This would shift cross-strait interaction from
RSS