The Executive Yuan plans to hold town hall meetings to discuss with the public how budget cuts might affect them, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said today.
Cho made the remarks at the Legislative Yuan, where lawmakers had asked him to speak about the Executive Yuan’s request for the legislature to reconsider the general budget and budget cuts.
“There is no way to achieve our expected goal,” he said, adding that it is the government’s responsibility to explain to the public how the budget cuts would affect them.
Photo: Liu Hsin-te, Taipei Times
Cho said he hoped that between today’s meeting on the budget and tomorrow’s meeting on the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), the legislature would reconsider the budget cuts.
Due to the size and quantity of the cuts and freezes, the government needs to explain to the public the difficulties that might arise, he said.
The cuts are more than six times more and the funds frozen more than nine times more than the average cuts and freezes over the past three years, with some agencies and programs already feeling the effects, he said.
Hopefully, the budget can be reconsidered, and a rational conversation can continue, Cho said.
For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed a budget of NT$111.27 million (US$3.38 million) for media and promotional expenses, which was reduced by NT$140.8 million, more than NT$29 million more than what was originally put forward, he said.
There is also difficulty in unfreezing budgets, he said.
Citing Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics data, he said that most funds remain frozen until November or December, making them unusable for most of the year.
Regarding the legislature’s decision to cut NT$100 billion in funding for Taiwan Power Co, Cho said the country would have to take on debt and raise electricity rates as a result, harming people’s livelihood and making Taiwan’s industry more uncompetitive.
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