The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said today that it would propose amendments to Article 16-1 of the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) to separate fiscal allocations for the three outlying counties from the 19 municipalities on Taiwan proper.
KMT Legislator Chen Hsueh-sheng (陳雪生) has started working on the amendments, which should reach a party consensus soon, it said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
President William Lai (賴清德) and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) today criticized amendments to the act, proposed by the opposition parties last year, for leading to non-distributable funds, central government debt and unequal distribution across urban and rural areas.
When the amendments were originally proposed last year, the opposition expected the Cabinet to present its own version, KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) told a news conference this morning.
However, the Executive Yuan did not offer an alternative proposal and reiterated that the original system of allocating 75 percent of national tax revenues to the central government and the remaining 25 percent to local governments was the best one, Lin said.
KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) called the flaws in the formula highlighted by the Cabinet “small flaws” and "calculation errors,” referring to the calculation of funds for the three outlying counties of Penghu, Kinmen and Lienchiang.
Amendments should be made accordingly, he said, adding that there are no problems with the law other than that.
The problem of the amended fiscal allocation act has been raised by the Cabinet when it requested the legislature to reconsider the bill, Cho said.
Cho is scheduled to invite local governments to two discussion sessions on the act on Saturday.
Cho said he hopes the problem can be resolved through the discussion sessions.
The latest revision of the act would lead to urban-rural inequity and is being rushed through, creating major difficulties in compiling next year’s national budget, Cho was quoted by Cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) as saying.
The opposition’s amendments to the act last year were a “grave mistake,” Lai said
The formula was improper, leading to more than NT$30 billion (US$988.425 million) in non-distributable funds and uneven horizontal allocation, leading to less funding for southern counties and cities, he said.
The amendments further pushed the central government to borrow more than NT$300 billion to balance out next year’s budget, weakening its ability to provide relief to local governments in the event of natural disasters, he added.
Additional reporting by Huang Mei-chu
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