After the Cabinet suspended the reform measures of the farmers' and fishermen's cooperatives, it announced that it intends to hammer out a new measure to tackle the problem and will submit it to the legislature before the year's end.
"We hope to reach a consensus and come up with a feasible resolution to deal with the long-standing problems associated with the grassroots cooperatives of farmers' and fishermen's associations on Nov. 30," Premier Yu Shyi-kun said.
The Executive Yuan is scheduled to hold a summit next Saturday to discuss agricultural financing and the consolidation of grassroots credit units.
Another summit will be called in late February and early March. It will address other issues such as the production and marketing of agricultural produce and how to upgrade the industry's competitiveness following Taiwan's accession to the WTO in January this year.
Responding to rumors that the Cabinet might cancel the summit, Minister without Portfolio Hu Sheng-cheng (
"Although we talked about it during the meeting, we failed to reach a final consensus over the topic," Hu said. "The summit will take place as scheduled. We've already sent out the invitations."
Hu met with representatives of farmers, fishermen and related government officials at the Executive Yuan yesterday morning. Six conclusions were drawn, including making the Council of Agriculture the supervisory body of the institutions.
Minister without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung (
"It's totally impossible," Hu said. "We made our stance clear on Sunday when we met with the farmers' and fishermen's representatives."
The Cabinet announced on Sunday that it will relax restrictions on credit units with a NPL ratio of between 15 percent and 25 percent.
It also pledged to return real estate assets that belonged to 20 of the 36 credit units that were transferred from the associations after 1975. The real estate assets don't affect the day-to day business of the cooperatives.
Yu said that although the Cabinet has suspended the three-tiered risk-control mechanism -- launched on Aug. 22 -- the government's resolve to push for reforms remains unchanged.
"If the control mechanism is a means to solve the problem of agricultural financing, our determination to push for agricultural reforms is the ultimate goal," Yu said. "While we are adjusting the means, the ultimate end is still there."
Yu also took the opportunity to explain the Cabinet's about-face on the policy.
"Because we hate to see government policy cause social instability or confrontation, we thought it was a good idea to halt the reform measure after we considered the impact the planned march may have on social stability," Yu said.
Farmers and fishermen have planned to protest the government's reform measures on the co-ops on Saturday.
"When the legislature approved the draft amendments to the statute regarding the establishment and management of the financial reconstruction fund (行政院金融重建基金設置及管理條例) on June 14, it requested the government take care of the financial problems of grassroots cooperatives," Yu said.
In addition, as the financial problem of the grassroots co-ops is less severe than that of the entire banking system, it only makes sense to tackle the grassroots co-ops first, Yu said.
According to Yu, the amount of the NPLs incurred by grassroots co-ops stands at about NT$180 billion this year, while that of the entire banking system is recorded at NT$1.8 trillion.
June's statistics from the Bureau of Monetary Affairs state that the government needs at least NT$1 trillion to deal with the NPLs of the entire banking system and the grassroots credit units' account for NT$67.3 billion of the nation's NPLs.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS