Vice premier outlines government goals

These mid- and long-term goals will help create a golden decade for Taiwan, Chu said at a press conference in response to the opposition Democratic Progressive Party's criticism of the government's policies as short-sighted.

Chu said that the DPP had stalled Taiwan's overall development for eight long years with biased ideologies and closed-door isolation policies.

Since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008, he has been implementing reforms such as opening up direct flights between Taiwan and China and establishing cross-Taiwan Strait postal, transportation, and trade links when China rapidly emerged as a major international powerhouse, Chu noted.

The Ma administration is now working to normalize cross-strait economic and trade relations through a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China, he said.

The ECFA will give better protection to the investments of Taiwanese businessmen in China and the intellectual property rights of Taiwan citizens, he added.

After the ECFA is signed with China, the Taiwan government will seek to ink free trade agreements (FTAs) with its other major trading partners around the world, the vice premier said.

Furthermore, he added, the government will reinvigorate the plan of developing Taiwan into a major operational hub in the Asia Pacific region and as headquarters for Taiwanese businessmen in China.

He said the administration's priorities include the development of six emerging industries — green energy, biotech, tourism, health care, high quality agricultural and the cultural creative industries — plus four smart industries and 10 services industries in a bid to create more jobs.

To this end, the government has formulated a bill for the development of cultural and creative industries and an industrial innovation act, he said.

With regard to a long term care system, the government is devising a second-generation health insurance plan that would calculate premiums based on total household incomes and would be introduced within two years to meet the people's needs in the next decade, Chu added.

In the past, he said, social care programs were designed mainly to provide cash subsidies to socially disadvantaged people and were not based on long-term and comprehensive planning.

Amid an increased pace of globalization and a growing free trade trend among emerging economies and China in the period 2000 to 2008, Taiwan was bound by restrictions on tourism and investment from China due to the DPP's political ideology, Chu said.

At a time when major structural changes in industry were taking place in Taiwan, the government was focused only on the development of high technology and capital intensive industries, while ignoring traditional industries, the vice premier said.

This led to massive unemployment and the loss of a competitive edge in many sectors, he added.

In the face of global warming and climate change, the previous administration failed to adopt any strategies to cut carbon dioxide emissions and to respond to the issues, Chu said.

In contrast, the current administration has a 10-year plan for energy conservation and carbon reduction and has designated this year as carbon reduction year, he said.

Concerning the upheavals on stock market, Chu said, the current administration has no plans to activate the National Stabilization Fund for now despite a drastic drop on the Taiwan Stock Exchange last week, which was led by almost all the world's stock markets.

The negative impact of the debt crisis in Europe on the local bourse will be short term, he forecast.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email