《TAIPEI TIMES》 Vouchers’ scope expansion mulled

By Lee Hsin-fang and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Cabinet is mulling expanding the scope of foreigners who would receive stimulus vouchers to include permanent residents and diplomatic service employees, among others, a government official familiar with the issue said yesterday.

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Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that the Cabinet estimates the proposed measure would make the vouchers available to 13,000 additional foreigners.

There is consensus that foreigners who qualified for last year’s Triple Stimulus Vouchers should also receive the new vouchers, but further inclusions are still being discussed, the official said.

The so-called quintuple stimulus vouchers is a proposed program to issue vouchers exchangeable for goods or services worth NT$5,000 at government-approved establishments.

On Monday, Premier Su Tseng-chang （蘇貞昌） and Democratic Progressive Party （DPP） lawmakers hammered out a policy consensus on this year’s program, the official said.

With forecasts that Taiwan’s economy will grow 5.88 percent this year, the vouchers’ NT$1,000 buy-in is to be waived, they said.

This would help spread the benefits of economic growth and reduce program costs by doing away with identifying eligible recipients, they said.

The program would also involve more of the service industry than last year, including restaurants, street vendors, hotels, small stores and some online stores, the official said.

Cabinet officials are in the process of creating a whitelist of e-commerce merchants that would be allowed to accept vouchers from consumers, they said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES