The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) caucus yesterday urged the government to pass its budget soon and observe fiscal discipline in helping Taiwanese weather inflation woes.
Calling “inflation” the word of the year, the caucus told a news conference at the legislature in Taipei that economic issues are gradually eroding people’s livelihoods.
Consumer prices have steadily risen throughout the year, TPP Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) said.
Photo: Lo Pei-te, Taipei Times
The consumer price index for last month increased 2.35 percent year-on-year, and has exceeded 2 percent over the past 16 consecutive months, she said.
Meanwhile, real regular wages fell 0.07 percent annually, she said, adding that inflation has cut into earnings and depleted people’s disposable income.
The last meeting of the Cabinet’s price stabilization committee to have publicized minutes was in August, and it only lasted an hour and was not attended by any top officials, Lai said.
The wage gap in Taiwan has grown more than sixfold since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in 2016, TPP Legislator Jang Chyi-lu (張其祿) said.
The Gini coefficient — a measure of income inequality in which 0 represents perfect equality and 1 extreme inequality — has reached a nine-year high at 0.341, he added.
Buying property is out of reach for most young people, yet amendments to the Equalization of Land Rights Act (平均地權條例) still languish in the legislature a year after they were proposed, he said.
Meanwhile, the government has been passive in responding to a new registration requirement for all imports into China, Jang said.
Even though it was aware of the new rule in April last year, it waited until it received a notice from the Chinese General Administration of Customs six months later to respond, he said.
The seven information sessions hastily thrown together by the Food and Drug Administration were not enough to help many producers, whose licenses have been suspended after submitting insufficient information, he said.
The government’s passiveness has dealt multiple blows to the nation’s food producers, Jang said.
If it just throws money at the problem, “it will be all Taiwanese who suffer,” he added.
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