Liu will make clear explanations to KMT lawmakers on why the two budgets should be screened and ratified simultaneously, according to Lawmaker Chang Shou-wen, convener of the KMT’s legislative caucus.

Chang said that his caucus will hold an emergency meeting today in order for Premier Liu to make detailed explanations.

Earlier yesterday, Liu told Chang that while the NT$82.9 billion shopping-voucher program can generate immediate effects on the island’s economic growth, the four-year economic revitalization program mainly targeting major infrastructure projects can make more substantive contribution to the economic growth.

But Speaker Wang Jin-pyng has reportedly asserted that both budget programs should be screened and ratified separately, lest undesirable variables should emerge to delay the screening and approval of the NT$82.9 billion shopping-coupon program. The coupons are scheduled to be granted to all nationals staring Jan. 19, one week before the Chinese New Year.

Some KMT lawmakers also seconded Wang’s view, saying that the NT$420 billion economic revitalization program had better be screened after the Chinese New Year holidays, so that the Cabinet can have more time to work out details of the program.

The four-year program will be aimed at carrying out

infrastructural projects, pushing urban renewal, promoting private investment, and accelerating industrial renovation.

The program is expected to contribute 1.64 percentage points to the economy’s growth rate next year, helping the government retain the rate at 2 percent.

The infrastructural projects under the program will include railway construction, highway construction, sewerage, renovation of condemned bridges, rural renewal, and anti-flooding projects.

In order to encourage private investments, the program calls for extending the 0066688 preferential package for industrial-land lease (free rental for the first two years, 40% discount for the third and fourth year, and 20 percent discount for the fifth and sixth year) to next year, expanding incentives, such as interest subsidy, for the expansion and startup projects of small and medium enterprises, the provision of preferential export loans and insurance, and encouraging foreign enterprises to expand their procurements in Taiwan.

It also aims to accelerate the implementation of urban renewal projects, by cutting related red tapes and setting up a central urban-renewal fund.

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