Good morning and thank you for tuning in with me on CTS News.

I'm Cary Chuo.

Premier Wu Den-yi presided over the opening ceremony of the new XinBei riverbank expressway yesterday. Wu stressed that subsidies for local governments in the second half of the year will not be diminished, while the budget for the central government may be reduced due to financial strain.

The new XinBei Riverbank Expressway links San Chung city to ChungHo City of Taipei County. The new expressway is 9.6 kilometers in length with car and bike lanes.

In the future, the expressway will extend to Xindian city, a great aid in relieving Taipei County traffic congestion.

The new Xinbei Bridge is going to become a landmark of the area.

Be the year-end, Taipei county would become Xinbei city; with the new construction transportation projects, it is rumored that the NT$ 100 billion budget that was planned to be released after the 5 special municipalities are formed by the Ministry of Finance and the Directorate-general of Budget, Account and Statistics would shrink to just NT$ 70 billion.

In addition, the 5 special municipalities would get less central government subsidies while Xinbei citys annual subsidy would become only NT$3.2 billion from the original NT$22.1 billion, which aroused complaints of local residents.

Faced with the questions, Premier Wu Dehn Yi said that, in the future, the budget allocated for local government would only be more and only the central government would be hurt by it, not the local government.

As to the small budget of NT$3.2 billion to Xinbei city, Wu said nothing has been set and there are still rooms for discussion and negotiation.