Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers yesterday said that stimulus checks, not the Executive Yuan’s proposed “quintuple stimulus voucher” program, are what Taiwan’s economy needs to recover amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
TPP Legislator Jang Chyi-lu (張其祿) told a news conference in Taipei that Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) claim that last year’s Triple Stimulus Voucher program added NT$100 billion (US$3.59 billion) to the economy is “a canned statement unsupported by any evidence.”
The TPP caucus demands that the Cabinet determine which industries were hardest hit by the outbreak and exactly how much money they need before proposing a policy, Jang said.
Photo: Chen Yun, Taipei Times
A comprehensive and objective review of the Triple Stimulus Voucher program’s effectiveness should be conducted, he said.
Taking the digitization of the service industry seriously, the government should guide the industry’s transition to e-commerce and help businesses implement disease prevention measures, he said.
Online retail revenue rose 3.2 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, showing that the digital transformation is vital for businesses that focus on satisfying domestic demand, he added.
The planned quintuple stimulus vouchers would not benefit Taiwanese families that urgently need money to survive, TPP Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) said, adding that many Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers also oppose the voucher plan.
Checks boost the economy better than vouchers and efficiency should matter to the government, as it has spent NT$679.5 billion of the NT$840 billion COVID-19 relief budget, she said.
The nation’s employment outlook is gloomy, she said, adding that an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent in June meant that 570,000 people were out of work, while 57,000 people have been placed on unpaid leave since late last month.
The government needs to be more generous with relief money, broaden eligibility standards and stop agencies from repackaging pre-pandemic programs as relief measures, she said.
Many subsidies have been too small to allow recipients to pay for daily expenses, she said.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS