Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Taipei City Government Department of Finance points out that, the city government has attached great importance to control debt, actively using several management strategies for years to improve debt management performance, therefore, the total amount of outstanding debt balance of $ 180.5 billion NT dollars in 2004 has decreased to 169.8 billion NT dollars by the time Mayor Hao took office in 2006. Since then, his approach was more strictly on enforcing debt control, as a result the total amount of outstanding debt balance has been reduced to 145.5 billion NT dollars at the end of June, 2011. The total debt amount has been reduced by 24.3 billion.
The Department of Finance indicates that the city government’s determination on debt management, by actively using various financial strategies to improve debt management performance, including: First, control the debt amount: (1) Follow the debt limits set by The Public Debt Act, strictly control the amount of annual and cumulative outstanding debt; (2) Accelerate the principal repayment: at least 5% of annual revenue will be used on principal repayment, the city government also used the surplus from previous year to repay principal. Second, strengthen the financial schedule: (1) Scheduling city treasury funds to help special budget to pay in advance for construction, in order to delay the time of borrowing and inhibit debt growth; (2) Using city treasury funds to pay debt and decrease the interest expense; (3) Put the city government’s special funds into the centralized payment, in order to increase city treasury funds that are available for scheduled. (4) Borrow short-term low-interest funds from banks or special funds to repay long-term high-interest loans, in order to avoid long-term interest-bearing debt. Third, increase revenue and decrease expenditure: including strengthening the tax collection process, implement the collection on administrative fines, promote the city-owned land development, strengthen the usage and management of public premises, the implementation of users and beneficiaries payments, actively conduct domestic and foreign investments, and strengthen the subsidy on industrial enterprises investments to develop new source of tax revenue and so on. On ways to cut down expenses includes using OT, BOT or joint development to conduct public constructions to combine with private resources. Through the implementation of the process, our government could effectively save money from budget, increase city treasury income, and inhibiting the growth of debt.
The city government will continue to strengthen debt control in the future, as a result to inhibit the growth of debt, and avoid debt to expand substantially.