Ma vows to achieve 6 percent GDP growth

Ma’s economic development blueprint, however, drew mixed responses from experts and leaders in relevant fields.

Wu Chung-chi, a professor at the National Taiwan University, said the projected annual economic growth rate of 6 percent is likely, but very difficult to attain.

Lu Tien-lin, chairman of the Cabinet-level Council of Labor Affairs, said it’s highly difficult for the jobless rate to be cut to under 3 percent.

Lu cited his council statistics as indicating that Taiwan’s jobless rate stood at 3.91 percent in the first eight months of the year, with a total of 442,000 people unemployed. If the rate is to fall under 3 percent, then the jobless population should drop to 327,000. In other words, he said, the number of the jobless should be cut by 115,000 and that of the employed should increase by 228,000, which won’t be achieved unless as many as 343,000 new job opportunities are created.

Liang Kuo-yuan, president of Polaris Research Institute, said Taiwan’s financial market regulations have been gradually tailored to meet international financial market systems, but the serious shortage of bilinguists and professional personnel has made it difficult for Taiwan’s financial markets to really go international.

In addition, the corporate governance should be significantly reinforced to make financial statements more transparent to public investors, which is also a key factor to attract more international financial institutions to invest in Taiwan, Liang continued.

Meanwhile, Liu Teh-hsun, vice chairman of the Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council, said allowing mainland Chinese tourists into Taiwan will surely be conducive to the development of the island’s tourism industry. But Liu also noted that his council won’t assess the effect of the market opening for the moment.

As to penetration of the travel medicine market, Hsieh Ying-hua, chairman of the Asia-Pacific Society of Travel Medicine, said it’s already a little late for Taiwan to join the market for the moment. But he said Taiwan is in a position to grasp some one fourth of the Asian travel medicine market, estimated at US$7 billion a year.

1|2

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email