Stabilization Fund Aims to Stabilize Electricity Prices, Not the DPP’s Election Prospects

 Stabilization Fund Aims to Stabilize Electricity Prices, Not the DPP’s Election Prospects

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

December 14, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

Minister Shen Jong-chin recently indicated at the Legislative Yuan that hiking electricity prices would impact commodity prices and that next April when the government was scheduled to convoke the Electricity Rates Review Committee meeting, the government would use the "Electricity Price Stabilization Fund" to reduce to “nearly zero” the electricity price hikes. Electricity prices in our country undergo reviews every April and October; Shen Jong-chin’s statement meant that at least the government would not hike electricity prices before next October. Nevertheless, would the spending of large sums of money return to central and southern Taiwan blue skies? We’re afraid it would not.

Earlier this year, the "Electricity Industries Act" was amended; a major change among the revisions was the establishment of the "Electricity Price Stabilization Fund," stipulating that Taipower should allocate all above quota profits to the account of this Fund; currently, the scale of the Fund has exceeded NT$80 billion. In accordance with the provisions of the draft “Regulations on the Revenue, Expenditures, Custody, and Operations of the Electricity Price Stabilization Fund," the main purpose for spending the Fund is to mitigate the impact of short-term, large-scale fluctuations in electricity prices on people's livelihood and the economy. Based on the forecasts of energy prices on the market, both domestic and foreign, this country’s electricity price would be hiked around 5% next April; the fluctuation range is not large. However, Shen Jong-chin declared that he would exhaust all his strength to maintain current electricity prices.

For next year’s elections, the DPP wouldn’t care about violating market mechanisms to freeze electricity prices, wanting to, while the fluctuation range of electricity prices is not too large, make use of the Fund in violation of the principles of operations for the "Electricity Price Stabilization Fund." This move, embellished as one to stabilize commodity prices, in actuality it is for stabilizing the DPP’s election prospects. Although the more than NT$80 billion in the Electricity Price Stabilization Fund came from above quota profits of Taipower, in actuality, it was taxpayers’ money. To spend the taxpayers’ money in order to stabilize the election prospects of the DPP, is that not using the pretext of public causes to serve its self-interests, spending state resources to aid the the ruling party for electioneering?

The Electricity Price Stabilization Fund is life-saving money for emergencies, it definitely cannot be deemed as private coffers to be spent at will by the Ministry of Economy Affairs, nor can it be used to aid the election campaigns of a single political party. For over a decade, our country has frozen prices for oil and power a number of times, paying a disastrous and painful price every time in the end. It has not been easy for Taiwan to return the price of oil and electricity to the normal market mechanisms; we could not throw the dice for the ruling party and return to the beaten path.

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