From next month, a fuel surcharge for tour buses is to be waived for a year, giving operators a needed boost as the tourism industry feels the effects of a decline in Chinese tourists, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said over the weekend.
The reprieve came after the ministry launched a winter travel subsidy program, allowing hoteliers to apply for loans from the NT$9.07 billion (US$290.24 million) backed by the Small and Medium Enterprise Credit Guarantee Fund.
Beijing’s ban on individual travel to Taiwan by Chinese has affected the tourism industry, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said.
Waiving the fuel surcharge for tour buses for one year would save an operator about NT$30,000 per vehicle, Lin said, adding that the ministry has the authority to implement the policy.
There have been other times when the fuel surcharge has been waived due to a significant event. The Directorate-General of Highways in 2008 agreed to waive the fuel surcharge or reduce it by 50 percent for cargo vehicles and tour buses for six months after a rise in oil prices, causing the National Treasury Administration to lose NT$1.5 billion.
Implemention of the year-long waiver is expected to cost the Treasury NT$435 million in revenue, the ministry said.
On a 2017 survey, tour bus operators said their revenues were in a continual slide, the ministry said.
The survey also showed that the operators had difficulty recovering costs through bus rate hikes or government subsidies, because they are on the bottom rung of the tourism industry.
The ministry said that, in amending the fuel surcharge rules so that the operators could directly benefit, it decided to waive the surcharge from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 next year.
Details are to be published tomorrow in the Executive Yuan’s gazette, the ministry added.
Taiwan has about 16,357 tour buses, ministry data showed, while the fuel surcharge varies from NT$18,900 to NT$69,300 a year, depending on the engine displacement of the tour bus.
The government is helping to ease the burden of tour bus operators at a time when business is dropping, National Joint Association of Bus for Tourists president Lin Chien-liang (林建良) said, but added that he hoped the ministry would propose a way for them to operate sustainably.
Waiving the fuel surcharge, although a small amount, is better than nothing, otherwise a lot of operators would go out of business, Taiwan Tour Bus Development Association chairman Lee Shih-chia (李式嘉) said.
However, the waiver is like pouring a glass of water on a raging fire — the relief quickly evaporates, he added.
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