Public projects are frequently subject to review and costs have skyrocketed over the past 10 years. Ye Junxian: Consider incorporating KPIs into consideration

Ye Junxian, chairman of the National Development Council. (File photo, taken by reporter Wang Yisong)

[Reporter Wu Xintian/Report from Taipei] When legislator Qiu Yiying questioned Ye Junxian, chairman of the National Development Council, in the Legislative Yuan today, she pointed out that the overall assessment and review process from planning, assessment, research to commencement and completion of many major public construction projects in the country is really too long. She emphasized that the perspective of public construction should be 20 years from now, but often it may be more than ten or twenty years from the proposal to the completion of review and construction.

Ye Junxian, chairman of the National Development Council, went to the Economic Committee of the Legislative Yuan to report on the business overview and prepare for questions. Qiu Yiying cited several projects in her constituency as examples, including the extension of National Highway 10 to Liugui, which was planned in 2012 and is not expected to be fully opened to traffic until 2030; the road under the Provincial Highway 39 high-speed rail bridge will only be opened to traffic in 2027. The priority section of the Youqiao Branch was completed; and Provincial Highway 86 was shelved by the then government after planning began in 2012. The plan was not re-proposed until 2019. It is still in the environmental impact assessment review stage and is not expected to start construction until 2028.

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Qiu Yiying pointed out that during these long review and planning processes, construction costs and labor costs continued to rise. Many projects may only cost 50 billion yuan when they were submitted for review, but by the time they actually started, the cost had soared to 120 billion yuan, and it often took 7 to 10 years to go back and forth.

In response to the long schedule of public construction, Qiu Yiying is concerned about whether the National Development Council can coordinate various ministries, improve and shorten the time for inter-ministerial review and discussion, and accelerate the promotion of national public construction. In response, Ye Junxian responded that the National Development Council will speed up the review as soon as possible and will also try its best to supervise relevant ministries and commissions. He said that he would further discuss with colleagues and other ministries. Although the nature of each project is different and a single standard cannot be applied, he would explore the possibility of formulating a set of standards and consider incorporating the public construction review schedule into the relevant KPI performance indicators.

Qiu Yiying also mentioned that although Taiwan's overall economic growth rate has increased significantly due to AI stocks, for traditional industries, its development is actually quite miserable, and asked the government what specific measures it can take to assist traditional industries in addition to past subsidies and loans to small, medium and micro enterprises.

In response, Ye Junxian explained that although the growth of traditional industries is slower than that of the AI ​​industry, it has not been declining. In order to improve traditional industries, the government is currently promoting the "Top Ten New AI Constructions", which includes a plan called "Smart Applications in Various Industries", hoping to enable traditional industries to apply more or use AI tools to improve production efficiency and profit margins.

In addition, Qiu Yiying also pointed out that the business tax rates of the AI ​​industry and traditional industries are currently the same, and suggested whether the difference in revenue and capacity between the two can be considered for differential taxation. She believes that the government can levy more taxes on the extremely high-revenue AI industry, while at the same time reducing the burden on traditional industries and reducing their sense of relative deprivation.

In response, Ye Junxian responded that business tax is a consumption tax in nature rather than a tax on corporate profits. However, he said that he would further study with the Ministry of Finance to explore how to strike a balance between AI development and traditional industries in terms of tax systems or other mechanisms.

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