The ruling and opposition parties are expected to vote on this fiscal year’s budget today, with opposition parties still promoting major cuts after failing to reach inter-party consensus again yesterday.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus called to slash all NT$44.2 billion (US$1.37 billion) in funds for the government’s uncrewed vehicle industry development project.
As the project has not reached consensus and all caucuses wished to continue talks, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) said the issue would be kept under discussion.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) caucus wanted to cut two percent, or NT$59 billion, of the total funding, saying that the central government should not directly subsidize local governments.
If subsidies have already been partially tendered, the central government should not continue to subsidize them, the TPP caucus said.
The TPP is also proposing to cut travel stipends to China; travel and training expenses abroad; and special, commission, common affairs, media policy and policy promotion funds, with some government agencies seeing their travel expenses and special funding allowances completely zeroed out.
The second round of cross-caucus talks on the general budget prioritized the TPP’s cut proposals.
Democratic Progressive Party caucus secretary-general Fan Yun (范雲) called for the opposition parties to stop their deep across-the-board cuts, citing how the TPP’s cuts have almost increased by 1.5 times from the slashes in the past four years, which stood at 1.12 percent in 2024, 1.2 percent in 2023 and 2022, and 1.19 percent in 2021.
There are only four more months left in the year, and making across-the-board cuts to ministries’ day-to-day operations would affect how they are run and how funds are used, Fan said.
The proposed slashes would harm Academia Sinica’s research on China, foreign academic expenses and funding to hire temporary staff, Fan added as an example.
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