Electricity rates are to be cut by 9.56 percent on Friday as scheduled, Vice Premier Woody Duh (杜紫軍) said yesterday in response to appeals by an aide to president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to delay the move.
The stance of the Executive Yuan is to abide by the law, and it will follow the electricity rate formula passed by the legislature last year, Duh said.
“Unless the legislature reviews the issue or revises formula, the Executive Yuan will follow the decision reached by the Rate Screening Committee on March 15,” he said.
The possibility of delaying the cut was raised after Chang Ching-sen (張景森), executive director of Tsai’s policy office, met with Duh on Friday.
At the meeting, he asked the ministry to put the rate reduction on hold until Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government takes office on May 20, so as to not affect the energy and environmental policies of the new government.
In a post on his Facebook page on Sunday, Chang said that Taiwan relies on imports for its energy needs, and electricity rates should be high, but they are not because the nation uses coal and nuclear plants to generate its electricity.
He said that if the ministry does not postpone the rate and global oil prices start to rise in the second half of the year, electricity rates will certainly rise, which he said would be inflationary.
“Power rate cuts do not lead to drops in commodity prices, but if the electricity rate rises, the prices of goods will rise along with it,” Chang said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Teh-fu (林德福) said he was surprised by the DPP’s position.
He said the DPP in January last year insisted that state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) come up with a formula to adjust electricity rates systematically and adjust electricity prices every year on April 1 and Oct. 1.
That was why Taipower announced the rate cut, which is to save the more than 13 million power customers in Taiwan a total of NT$56.2 billion (US$1.72 billion) per year, Lin said.
Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) earlier yesterday said that the rate cut would take effect on Friday if the legislature does not pass a new resolution on the issue.
The DPP seemed to give mixed signals on its position.
DPP spokesperson Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) said the party respected the decision that is to be implemented by the executive branch based on the legislature’s resolution last year.
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) did not seem to oppose preserving the scheduled rate cut either, saying that any adjustment of electricity rates should consider energy policy and conservation.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS