The Kaohsiung City Government will help resolve the financial deficit currently borne by the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC), which operates the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, the city's MRT bureau director Chen Kai-ling (陳凱凌) said on Thursday.
Given a low passenger volume, the system posted an operating loss of NT$2.2 billion (US$67.8 million) last year and is expected to post another loss of NT$2.6 billion this year, KRTC general manager Yen Pang-chieh (顏邦傑) said.
With these figures, plus NT$1 billion in losses related to building problems during its construction phase, the system is projected to post nearly NT$6 billion in cumulative losses by the end of this year, more than half of the KTRC's total paid-in capital of NT$10 billion, Yen said.
Describing the company as being in dire financial straits, Yen said that it is also due to pay billions of New Taiwan dollars in construction fees to contractors during the current cost accounting period.
Saying that ticket revenues are not enough to offset operating losses, Yen said the company was seeking financial support from the city government.
In response, Chen said that the city government would provide NT$2.8 billion to help the company fill the deficit incurred during the construction stage.
Chen promised that the local government would do what it could to address the KRTC's financial crisis, while calling on the company to map out potential solutions, including ways to increase passenger volume and raise more capital.
Yen said the company did not do well in raising revenue and reducing expenditures until last year when it began implementing a retrenchment plan to cut operating losses.
He said the company had also tried to increase revenue by launching land development projects and renting out shopping space near MRT stations, but the results did not meet expectations because of the economic downturn.
The company has set a target of achieving average daily passenger volume of 360,000 this year and 500,000 next year. But to date, daily passenger volume has reached no more than 100,000, or about 25 percent of its forecast, Yen said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS