萬國法律事務所

In order to decrease unemployment rate, the draft Enterprise Innovation Act has been presented to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation. Article 20 of the said draft enables the competent authority to subsidize small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which increase hiring, the legal basis for the policy aiming to increase employment opportunities and improving labor market conditions.

The qualifications and the application process for such subsidies will be further devised after and if the draft Enterprise Innovation Act survives the legislative process. The preliminary scheme is to provide SMEs which increase hiring with subsidies of 10,000 NT dollars per month for a period of 6 months, and for those SMEs which increase hiring of senior employees, the period of government subsidy may be extended to one year. The estimated cost of subsidizing SMEs for hiring one employee is about 100,000 NT dollars, which means that a budget of 3 billion NT dollars would create 30,000 job opportunities.

Under Article 20 of the draft Enterprise Innovation Act, the competent authority has discretion over the subsidy. When the economy appears encouraging, the competent authority has no obligation to provide the subsidies. However, when the job market is on the decline, this mechanism may be utilized to create employment opportunities.