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.
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