The Executive Yuan would ask the Legislative Yuan to unfreeze the NT$138.1 billion (US$4.25 billion) budget for 1,584 items that the latter has put on hold, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday.
The Cabinet has instructed all ministries to submit their requests to the Legislative Yuan to unfreeze their respective budgets, Cho told reporters prior to a meeting at the legislature in Taipei.
Hopefully, the legislature would release the funds as soon as possible to allow government agencies to function normally, he said.
Photo: CNA
Budget freezes can be divided into three categories, he said.
The first category, covering 1,162 items totaling NT$15.4 billion, consists of spending categories whose funds can be instantly unlocked once a proposal is submitted, the premier said.
The second, with 373 items totaling NT$36.6 billion, requires the submission of a special report, and funds can only be released after the report has been reviewed by the legislature, he said.
The third category, covering 49 items estimated at NT$86.1 billion, are special frozen items with varying requirements for the funds to be unlocked, he said.
About 30 of these items require that a certain percentage of the budget be implemented before the frozen funds can be unlocked, while the requirements to unfreeze the budget for some other items are difficult to meet because they are illegal or unconstitutional, he said.
At the plenary session, Cho told lawmakers that the Executive Yuan would request constitutional interpretations for the general budget and the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), as the legislature had rejected the Cabinet’s requests for reconsideration.
“We do not recognize these budget review procedures as legal or constitutional,” he said.
Asked about the 3 percent pay hike for civil servants, military personnel and public-school teachers, Cho said they would be issued starting next month.
The pay raise was delayed because the Cabinet believed it was inappropriate to allocate the funds before its effort to overturn the NT$3.1 trillion central government budget plan approved by the legislature was resolved, he said.
The Cabinet pushed for a reconsideration of the budget because of its many cuts and freezes, but the legislature on March 12 voted to uphold the budget it passed on Jan. 21.
Cho said a decision was finally made yesterday morning to start dispensing the 3 percent salary raise for civil servants starting next month, but he did not provide further details.
The wage hike for public servants was approved by the Executive Yuan in July last year.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said that during the 80-plus days since the legislative session opened in February, the Executive Yuan has not communicated with the Legislative Yuan regarding the general budget or requested any items be unfrozen, but has instead been spreading rumors and playing the victim.
If there have been any obstacles to implementing the budget, the Executive Yuan and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) bear the greatest responsibility, it said.
Cho’s sudden order to submit all 1,584 frozen budget items for review shows that the Executive Yuan’s previous inaction in this regard was a purposeful directive, it said.
It also shows that the DPP was using the national budget to manipulate public opinion and divide society, disregarding people’s livelihood and adding fuel to the fire, it said.
Additional reporting by Liu Wan-lin
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