The Cabinet has achieved two of the three goals for the economy set by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) — reducing unemployment and boosting economic growth — officials said yesterday.
However, Chen did not deliver on his vow, made in 2004, to raise overall expenditure on research and development-related sectors to more than 3 percent of GDP within three years, the officials said.
Council for Economic Planning and Development Chairwoman Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥) and Deputy Minister of National Science Council Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) presented reports on the government’s performance over the past eight years at the Cabinet meeting yesterday.
Wu said overall expenditure on research and development-related sectors went up from 1.98 percent in 1999 to 2.58 percent in 2006.
“Although the government increased budgets earmarked for technology development each year, the growth rate was limited by the legislature. The proposed budget was cut by 8.7 percent in 2005 and another 7.9 percent in 2006,” Wu told a press conference following the meeting.
While seeking re-election in 2004, Chen vowed to expand the technology budget, to cut unemployment to below 4 percent within two years and to boost economic growth to above 5 percent in a year.
“The government’s pursuit of economic revitalization through a series of economic measures produced concrete results. The country has achieved stable economic growth. We saw a significant increase in private investment and a record high in foreign investment,” Chang said.
Chang said 909,000 jobs were created since the Democratic Progressive Party came to power in 2000. For its part, unemployment went down to 3.9 percent, a record low in the past seven years.
Of the jobs created, 665,000 were filled by women, bringing the labor force participation rate to 49.4 percent, a record high, Chang said.
The country’s average economic growth for the past seven years was 4.1 percent, with an average of 5.23 percent in the last four years — higher than South Korea’s 4.7 percent, Chang said.
Twenty-nine multinationals set up 36 research and development centers since 2002, with investment in Taiwan up to NT$33 billion (US$1.08 billion), Chang said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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