Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) yesterday said that his comments last week on the nation’s real-estate industry were taken out of context to make it appear that he was encouraging the practice of property flipping.
Hsu on Tuesday last week reportedly told participants at an award ceremony for outstanding real-estate agents that the real-estate industry is like a shield for Taiwan and a locomotive for the domestic economy.
“The context of my speech was that we need to ensure the stability of the real-estate market and prevent it from soaring or plummeting,” Hsu said yesterday on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
“However, regrettably, some only focused on the part about the real-estate market being a locomotive for the domestic economy, and deliberately took that statement out of context,” he said.
Hsu said the Ministry of the Interior has spared no effort in cracking down on property flippers, adding that he does not need to change his statement.
Instead, people should focus on what he said about the importance of maintaining the stability of the real-estate market, he said.
Photo: CNA
The ministry was separately accused of “shelling out money” to Taitung County residents by offering subsidies of NT$500,000 per household to help people whose homes or farmhouses were damaged by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake on Sept. 18.
“The government is offering subsidies so that residents whose homes have sustained damage can resume a normal life. They did not profit from the subsidies,” he said, adding that people should stop using political language to misinterpret the government’s good intentions.
New Power Party (NPP) Chairwoman Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said Hsu’s real-estate remarks conflicted with President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) campaign promise of achieving housing justice.
“Many young Taiwanese are suffocating because of high housing prices. Rather than addressing the problem, the ministry under Hsu’s leadership is praising the real-estate industry,” Chen said.
Although the ministry’s proposed amendments to the Equalization of Land Rights Act (平均地權條例) have already been submitted to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation, the Democratic Progressive Party and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucuses have told reporters that the bill should not be reviewed at this legislative session, Chen said.
Citing government data, NPP Taipei city councilor candidate Jerry Liu (劉仕傑) said that Taiwanese workers’ salaries have grown by an average of 13 percent in the past 10 years, while housing prices have surged 40 percent over the period.
“This shows the difficulty for a salaried employee to buy a house in Taiwan. Rising housing prices are eroding Taiwan’s economy and the situation will only deteriorate if nothing is done about it,” he said.
NPP Taipei city councilor candidate Chen Chih-ming (陳志明) asked Hsu whether he stands for housing justice.
Chen said that Taiwan’s housing price-to-income ratio climbed to 9.69 in the second quarter of this year, citing data released by the ministry on Sunday.
In Taipei, the ratio was 16.17, which means that city residents cannot afford to buy a house even if they do not eat or drink and save all their earnings for 16 years, he said, adding that the data on mortgage burden rates showed that the average household in Taipei spends about 66 percent of its disposable income on mortgage payments.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS