In modern Taiwan society, the deterioration of local public finance has been rampant, and the fiscal coma scale has been lingering below average. According to the survey conducted by the Business Weekly magazine on local public finance over the past 12 years, the governments of Hsinchu County, Taitung County, New Taipei City and Taoyuan County have been sparing no effort to tap new sources of local income and to stop the fiscal deterioration by cutting expenditures, making them the role models for improving local public finance.
According to Business Weekly, the Hsinchu County government, despite the currently poor fiscal conditions of most Taiwan’s municipalities, held 700 hearings to negotiate with citizens about the elderly welfare benefits and means testing policy in order to cope with financial difficulties, making the County the best example of local public finance.
On behalf of the County government, Magistrate Chiu expressed his gratitude for the recognition by Business Weekly, and stated that all these achievements could hardly be done without the collective effort by the staff of County government. In spite of the limited budgets in hands, in order to build a Happy City, the County government endeavored to allocate the resources appropriately to people in need. Magistrate Chiu also sent recognition of Secretary-General’s assistance in prudently and flexibly organizing the County’s Finance Department and Accounting and Statistics Department.
The County government’s fiscal condition has been greatly improved since Magistrate Chiu took office, the County’s Secretary-general Hsu Kan-Mei announced. Hsu added that the County government has always respected the demands from the Control Yuan and National Audit Office and actively increased the tax sources. The County government has also strived to tap new sources of income, to reduce expenditure, and to make wise use of resources by prioritizing some budgets based on its urgency.
The trend analysis of Hsinchu County government’s annual income and expenditure deficits over the past decade pointed out that the County has been suffering from a long-term fiscal distress, and the annual income and expenditure deficits fell in between approximately 2.8 and 4.6 billion dollars, the Director-general of Finance Department Wu Su-Qin noted. However, since the inauguration of Magistrate Chiu, the County government has been seeking for concrete and feasible countermeasures to attract more new sources of income, including appropriate allocation of resources and verification of budget, so as to reach the efficiency of budget implementation. Magistrate Chiu also advised that relevant agencies put heads together to map out comprehensives projects to earn more project-based subsidies from the central government, thus marking a breakthrough to relieve the annual income and expenditure deficits in 2010. Following the fiscal watershed, the budget deficits started to significantly shrink from 2011 through 2013. In 2012, the analysis even indicated a budget surplus, showing that the whole fiscal structure of Hsinchu County government has been getting stably solid in recent years.
Writer: Fan Rui-Yuan, Press Section
Tel: 5518101 ext. 3912