Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun: The blue and white drone bill may crowd out the budget and affect industrial development

The Blue and White Legislative Yuan caucuses separately proposed a drone bill, advocating an annual budget and opposing the Executive Yuan's version of special budget support. Fan Yunjin, secretary-general of the Legislative Yuan of the Democratic Progressive Party, emphasized that the agency responsible for the Executive Yuan version is the Ministry of National Defense, while the responsible agency for the Blue and White version is the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The opposition version advocates returning to annual budgets, which may crowd out annual policy expenditures and make industries worry about uncertain cuts, freezes or delays.

Fan Yun pointed out that after the DPP’s constant appeals, Blue and White finally proposed the drone regulations. The DPP caucus very much welcomes Blue and White’s own version and hopes that the bill will be discussed in the committee as soon as possible. However, the content of the Executive Yuan version is very different from that of the Kuomintang and the People's Party. The responsible agency for the Executive Yuan version is the Ministry of National Defense, while the responsible agency for the Blue and White version is the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The Executive Yuan version focuses on the urgent needs of national defense, Fan Yun continued, while Blue and White focuses on industrial development. The People's Party version is even limited to no flying vehicles. Small attack unmanned ships, one of the three major needs of the Executive Yuan version, are completely excluded in the People's Party version.

Fan Yun emphasized that this special regulation on drones is in response to the urgent needs of national defense. To strengthen Taiwan's independent national defense capabilities, industrial development is very important, but the overall goal is still national defense needs. He hopes that the government and the opposition will support the Executive Yuan version.

Regarding the requirements of the blue and white version of the drone regulations to be returned to the annual budget, Fan Yun explained that the Executive Yuan version is based on annual fiscal surplus or borrowing debt, which does not exclude the budget as a source of funding. The blue and white version uses the annual public service budget, which will crowd out existing government expenditures and may crowd out budgets such as social welfare and UNESCO. If they are not statutory expenditures, they may be squeezed out.

Fan Yun said that the special regulations on drones issued by the Executive Yuan will not be squeezed into every year's budget. What the drone-related industries are most worried about is political instability. In terms of this year's total budget, many ministries have not yet completed their review. Such uncertain deletions, freezes or delays will become destabilizing factors for industry development.