The Executive Yuan should prepare digital stimulus vouchers and earmark funding for a stimulus program that should start once the COVID-19 situation has eased, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators told an online news conference yesterday.
DPP Legislator Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) said that issuing vouchers would be an effective means for the government to stimulate a post-COVID-19 economic recovery.
“Digital vouchers” of small denominations should be issued rather than paper ones, as they would make it easier for smaller businesses to handle payments, he said.
Photo: Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
The program should target the needs of the food and beverage sector, retailers, firms in the travel industry, and the arts and humanities sector, he said.
The program should seek to help small businesses affected by the outbreak and incentivize smaller purchases instead of big-ticket spending, he said.
Contactless payments using digital vouchers would be more convenient than paper vouchers and help lower the risk of COVID-19 infection, DPP Legislator Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵) said.
Last year’s Triple Stimulus Voucher program cost the government NT$1 billion (US$35.8 million), including packaging, delivery and printing, she said, adding that digital vouchers lower the share of spending that does not benefit the public.
The Act Governing Electronic Payment Institutions (電子支付機構管理條例) sets safe standards for the easy flow of digital payments, and the government should recognize the role e-payment platforms have taken on for many Taiwanese, she said.
Digital vouchers would also push the development of a “green” financial system and the local fintech industry, she said.
Stimulus programs should start only when the COVID-19 situation has eased, DPP Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) said, adding that the scope and aims of a program should be debated by the Executive Yuan.
Hsu said he believed that more people would opt for digital vouchers this time, compared with just 13 percent when the Triple Stimulus Vouchers were issued.
The National Development Council said that it would look into the matter.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods