The Executive Yuan today warned that if amendments to the central government’s ability to control revenues go into effect, it would impact next year’s budget and may even require it to be reconfigured.
On Friday last week, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) for the first time in more than 25 years to allocate more funding for local governments rather than the central government.
If the president promulgates the amendments and they go into effect, next year’s general budget would be in jeopardy, Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said.
Photo: CNA
The new law affects local revenues, but not the expenditures, so further revisions to the budgets are likely, Director-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) said.
The Executive Yuan is looking at constitutional relief procedures and other response measures, Lee added.
It is unfortunate that no consensus was reached and the amendments were hastily pushed through, Lee said.
Although local governments are responsible for services like welfare, education, water resources and local transportation, not all municipalities are able to generate revenues equally, leading to the central government providing support through subsidies and development programs, Lee said.
In response to calls to amend the fiscal regulations, the Executive Yuan has held meetings with different sectors and officials, but forging consensus takes time, she said.
The opposition parties pushed through the amendments before a consensus could be reached, she added.
As the amendment did not include an effective date, it would go into effect three days after the president promulgates it, meaning that it could affect budgets as soon as next year, she added.
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