Assisting the industrial sector by creating an environment for the development of emerging technologies could help solve the challenges created by the eurozone debt crisis and a tepid economic recovery in the US, National Science Council Minister Cyrus Chu (朱敬一) said yesterday.
During his first executive report to the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, Chu was questioned by legislators about the US beef issue and the future role of the council after it becomes the Ministry of Science and Technology as part of a government reorganization program.
Legislators specifically questioned Chu — an academic known for his outspoken criticism of the government’s policies — about how he would handle being a governmental official.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kun, Taipei Times
Chu said the new ministry would play a key role in “technological innovation” by creating a better research environment, discovering and fostering potential talent, and transforming the nation’s industries from an “efficiency-oriented” focus to an “innovation-oriented” mindset.
However, some legislators noted that the authority to review technology budgets will be held by the Executive Yuan’s Board of Science and Technology, and they said they feared the ministry would simply become an executive agency that lacked sufficient authority.
“The council currently reviews a budget of about NT$100 billion [US$3.38 billion], of which about NT$60 billion is slated for the general technology budgets of other government agencies, while the other NT$40 billion is for the council’s own operating budget,” Chu said.
“It is true that the authority to review budgets will be transferred to the board after the council becomes a ministry, and we will have to work on this new arrangement,” he said.
When questioned about US beef imports and the presence of ractopamine, Chu said the issue was both scientific and political, and that it was a difficult problem to deal with.
The effects of ractopamine on human health can be discovered through scientific research, but consumers’ decisionmaking can be easily influenced by many factors, Chu said, adding that once a person reaches their own conclusion, it was hard to change them.
Responding to a question on whether the council would fund research into the effects of ractopamine on humans, Chu said he had urged the Department of Health’s National Health Research Institutes to add ractopamine to its current investigations about the effects of environmental toxins on humans, and that if institute did so, the council would be willing to provide some funding to assist the research.
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