At the Cabinet's weekly meeting today, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) and the Ministry of Finance reported on proposals for the central government's 2018 general budget and the special budget for the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program.
Priority funding areas will include public works, industrial innovation, drug campaigns, food safety, education and social welfare. Premier Lin Chuan asked each government agency to focus their efforts on important policy areas so that the public can understand what the administration is doing and how these initiatives differ from the past.
The Legislature will convene an extraordinary session in late August to continue reviewing the proposed first-term special budget for the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program. The 2018 general budget proposal will also be sent to the Legislature at that time. Premier Lin instructed agencies to communicate closely with lawmakers and all legislative caucuses, taking initiative to understand their concerns and answer any questions quickly. If the budgets are slashed, frozen or met with obstruction, the agencies should address those issues promptly to head off budget execution problems later on.
According to the DGBAS, the 2018 fiscal budget proposes expenditures of NT$1.985 trillion (US$65.5 billion), which will be within range of the NT$1.998 trillion proposed for 2017. And compared with the NT$1.974 trillion actually approved for 2017, the 2018 proposed expenditures will only grow 0.6 percent, also lower than the nominal average GDP growth of 2.51 percent over the three previous years.
The 2018 fiscal budget proposal also includes revenues of NT$1.8904 trillion (US$62.4 billion). Compared with 2017, these revenues will grow by NT$49.3 billion or 2.7 percent, a faster pace than the NT$11 billion or 0.6 percent growth in spending. The budget deficit in 2018 will be NT$94.6 billion, smaller than the 2017 deficit by NT$38.3 billion or 28.8 percent.
The government will borrow NT$173.6 billion (US$5.7 billion) for the 2018 fiscal year, or NT$33.3 billion less than for 2017. The amount borrowed will account for 8.7 percent of proposed expenditures this year, or 1.8 percent less than in 2017. Also, the 2018 budget shows principal repayment of NT$79 billion, or NT$5 billion more than in 2017. Outstanding debt as a percentage of nominal average GDP over the past three years will be 33.4 percent, just 0.4 percentage point more than for 2017, and 7.2 percentage points lower than the 40.6 percent ceiling imposed in the Public Debt Act.