Warning with French protests! Lai Ching-te: Hope the opposition will support additional budget to stabilize prices

The central government's supplementary budget for 2015 included funds to supplement Taipower and PetroChina, but the opposition parties threatened to significantly cut them. According to reports, President Lai Ching-te, who is also the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party, said today (4th) that there have been mass demonstrations in France and Italy recently, and part of the social pressure comes from rising prices and inflation. Therefore, the government will allocate funds in the supplementary budget to stabilize prices. He hopes that the Democratic Progressive Party group in the Legislative Yuan will strengthen its external explanations, and also hopes to communicate with the Kuomintang to jointly stabilize prices.

The Executive Yuan passed this year's supplementary budget, amounting to NT$607.6 billion, which included subsidies for PetroChina and Taipower. Considering that PetroChina's debt ratio was as high as 94%, it decided to increase capital for PetroChina by NT$233.8 billion, which attracted dissatisfaction from the opposition parties and threatened to delete it. Eight major industrial and commercial groups jointly called on Taipower and China National Petroleum Corporation to cooperate with the government to stabilize prices and people's electricity consumption and suffer losses. The government should prepare budgets to allocate subsidies or increase capital to avoid impacts on industrial operations and people's livelihood prices. They called on the Legislative Yuan to support them during deliberation.

The Democratic Progressive Party held its regular meeting this afternoon. According to participants, Lai Qingde mentioned during the temporary motion stage that mass demonstrations have recently occurred in France and Italy. The protests in France were initiated by students on the issue of educational resources, but subsequent protests and social pressure also came from rising prices and inflation, and the government is very concerned about this.

Lai Ching-te emphasized that this is why the government has specially allocated funds to subsidize CNPC and Taipower in the supplementary budget. The purpose is to stabilize prices and prevent the entire society from bearing the pressure of inflation. Therefore, we hope that the Democratic Progressive Party group will strengthen its explanation to the Legislative Yuan and the public, and also hope that it can communicate with the Kuomintang to stabilize prices, because prices are a matter for the entire society, and the supplementary budget must be passed quickly.

In addition, Lai Qingde said that the government has allocated 60 billion yuan in the central government's general budget next year to supplement the health insurance fund. It also hopes that health insurance premiums will not rise. The relevant budgets hope to obtain the support of the Legislative Yuan.

As for the progress of the review of the supplementary budget, Zhuang Ruixiong, secretary-general of the Democratic Progressive Party, reported that Blue and White have agreed to deal with the supplementary budget on November 20. Currently, various committees of the Legislative Yuan are handling the budget unfreezing case. The Democratic Progressive Party will continue to discuss it in a rational way to win support.