Ma made the assessment in his address to the opening of the 17th provisionary meeting of the ruling Kuomintang’s National Congress. He called for cooperation between the ruling and opposition parties to pull the country out of the economic plight caused by the devastating global financial storm.

Taiwan is estimated to record a 2.12 percent economic growth rate in 2009 thanks to the economic stimulus and the additional influx of tourists from China, according to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, which would put it on par with Hong Kong and ahead of Singapore and South Korea.

According to the Executive Yuan, the economy is expected to continue to register negative growth in the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year, as it has already done in the third quarter of this year.

The economic stimulus package also includes a project to allocate NT$400 billion (US$11.98 billion) over the next four years on public construction projects to stimulate the stagnant economy.

Ma acknowledged that people are having a harder time because of the financial crisis and said that over the past six months since he took office, the government has been racing against the clock every day to work out efficient strategies to help people face the storm.

“Now the government is ready to lift up the spirits of the people,improve the economic environment and recover Taiwan’s prosperity,” he said.

Inflation has been controlled in Taiwan, Ma stated, elaborating that inflation in the first eight months of the year stood at 4.3 percent, but dropped to 4.1 percent in September, and further slid to 3 percent to date. It should be controlled at no higher than 2 percent by next year, he predicted.

The current tough challenge facing the government is how to restore the country’s economic prosperity through encouraging investment and consumption, Ma said.

Earlier in the day, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan pledged to deliver the shopping vouchers — one of the government’s strategies to boost domestic consumption — to every citizen in the country before the Lunar New Year holiday in late January.

The shopping coupon program, however, did not receive a positive response from Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who said Saturday that the DPP would prefer to see cash distributed rather than vouchers.

Giving the citizens NT$3,600 in cash “could at least save the cost” of producing and distributing the NT$3,600 vouchers, Tsai argued.

She also expressed doubt that the vouchers will actually help with economic recovery, saying that whether people spend cash or vouchers, the outcome will be almost the same.

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