Taiwan is launching an unprecedented program to distribute the benefits of artificial intelligence. President Lai Ching-te has officially announced one-time payments of 10,000 TWD (~$314) for every resident of the island. This decision is a direct result of the rapid growth of AI-related sectors, which have fundamentally transformed the structure of government revenues.
To implement the initiative, the central budget will be expanded by 235.7 billion TWD (~$7.4 billion). The authorities' key argument is a higher assessment of government revenues, which allows maintaining a balanced budget without increasing the debt burden. In essence, this is a mechanism for redistributing windfall profits from the global technology boom in favor of the population.
The Legislative Yuan will review the budget proposal before the end of this year. If approved, the first payments will begin before February 2027. In parallel, the Bureau of Statistics has revised its economic growth forecast for 2026 to 11.05% — the highest figure in 39 years. In the first half of the year, the island's economy had already grown by 14.15%.
Lai Ching-te attributes this momentum to the strong export sector, but acknowledges that workers in the service sector, traditional industries, and small businesses have not yet fully felt the effect of the growth. It is precisely this imbalance that the new payment is designed to address.
Criticism has not been absent. Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an reminded that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party had previously blocked similar proposals from the opposition, calling them unconstitutional. Observers also see political undertones in the initiative ahead of the 2028 presidential election. Notably, a defense budget is being discussed in parallel, which could for the first time exceed 1 trillion TWD (~$31 billion).
It is worth recalling that on August 13, Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Development reported a large-scale cyberattack on government institutions using AI agents — a further reminder of the dual nature of technological progress.
My analysis: Taiwan is demonstrating a rare example of fiscal policy directly tied to the technology cycle. However, such "dividends" could create a dangerous precedent of linking social obligations to the volatility of the AI market. In the long term, the sustainability of this model will depend on the authorities' ability to diversify growth sources, rather than on the current conditions of the semiconductor sector.