Direct Action 5-5 (in Mandarin)

Unemployment rate falls to 3.85 percent, its lowest level since May 2008: DGBAS

RECOVERY:The jobless rate right may rise after new graduates hit the job market, but the improvement is clear. Average wages also rose 4.73% from a year ago

Taiwan’s unemployment rate fell to 3.85 percent last month to reach its lowest level since May 2008, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.

The figure represents improvements of 0.06 percentage points from 3.91 percent in April and 0.21 percentage points from 4.06 percent in May last year, the agency said in its monthly report.

It was the second consecutive month the jobless rate has fallen below 4 percent since the global financial crisis in 2008, the agency said.

The seasonally adjusted rate — a more accurate indicator of the long-term employment trend — also fell, shedding 0.05 percentage points from April to 3.99 percent last month, the report said.

The number of employed rose 12,000 to 11.05 million last month from a month earlier, with the number of unemployed down 6,000 month-on-month to 443,000, an indication that the job market has improved, DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) said.

However, Lo remained cautious about the unemployment situation in the near future, as a new round of college graduates will start entering the job market from this month, with these first-time jobseekers expected to raise the unemployment rate over the next few months.

“Historical data shows that the jobless rate in June usually remains higher than that in May,” Lo told a press conference.

However, 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) public relations director Daniel Lee (李大華) said demand for workers has been relatively strong this year, which may help slow the seasonally rising pace of the unemployment rate over the next few months.

The DGBAS report also said that the average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to a record-level NT$37,871 in the first four months of the year, an increase of 1.37 percent from the previous year.

The overall average monthly wage, including bonuses and compensation, rose 4.73 percent to a new high of NT$53,769 in the January-to-April period, compared with the same period in the previous year, the report said.

However, the increase in the average wage was still lower than the pace of the consumer price index.

After adjusting the average for inflation — which climbed 1.01 percent year-on-year in the first four months — the real average wage, including bonuses and compensation, totaled NT$52,087, which was still less than the NT$52,810 recorded during the same period in 1998, the report said.

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Import of Chinese agricultural products harmful to domestic industries

By Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

An alliance of groups against establishing free economic pilot zones protests outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times

Several academics, farmers and civic groups yesterday said that the government’s plan to allow agricultural products to be imported from China to free economic pilot zones for food processing would seriously harm the nation’s agriculture and farmers.

With the draft special act governing the proposed free economic pilot zones to be reviewed during the ongoing extra legislative session, academics, farmers and civic group members protested in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, criticizing the draft act for allowing “value-added agriculture” to take place in the zones.

The Taiwan Rural Front said five articles in the draft act would seriously damage the nation’s agricultural output value and sustainability, ruin the credibility of “made in Taiwan” (MIT) products, as well as endanger consumers’ food safety if they are passed.

The nation’s food self-sufficiency rate stands at about 30 percent, which is relatively low compared with other nations, the group said, adding that self-sufficiency rates of about 70 percent in the UK, nearly 90 percent in Germany and about 42 percent in Japan, show that these free-trade nations still view domestic agriculture and food safety as important issues.

National Chung Hsing University economist Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said the articles about value-added agriculture would allow banned agricultural products to be imported from China and processed in the zones and sold as MIT products.

Although Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) has said 830 agricultural products from China are still prohibited, they would be allowed to enter the pilot zones and be processed as products for export under the the current pilot zone plan, Chen Chi-chung said, adding that other products made with Chinese agricultural ingredients can still be sold in the domestic market.

“If agricultural products are allowed to be imported under zero-tariff, then what food-processing company would still choose to use domestic food ingredients?” Chen Chi-chung asked.

Jang Show-ling (鄭秀玲), professor and chair of National Taiwan University’s Department of Economics, said if the products made of imported ingredients can bear the MIT brand for marketing, it may ruin the credibility of MIT products and endanger food safety, which may even be harmful to the nation’s food-processing industry in the long run.

National Taiwan University Department of Agricultural Economics chairman Roger Woo (吳榮杰) said the contents of the draft act are “cruel” to farmers and only beneficial to a small number of people.

Wu Chia-ling (吳佳玲), a rice farmer from Yilan County, said allowing food products made with Chinese agricultural ingredients to be sold under the MIT brand would force Taiwanese farmers to endorse agricultural products from China.

Hung Hsiang (洪箱), a watermelon farmer from Miaoli County, said Taiwanese farmers can process their grow and process their own food products, but the government is incapable of protecting domestic agriculture, so farmers want Chen Bao-ji to step down as minister.

They also urged the government to exclude articles related to “value-added agriculture” from the draft special act governing the proposed free economic pilot zones.