On July 21, 1997, a Presidential Decree promulgated amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of China, where Article 9 stipulated: Service term of the members of the 10th Taiwan Provincial Council and the 1st Governor of Taiwan Province is to end on December 20, 1998. Election for members of the Taiwan Provincial Council and Governor of Taiwan Province is to cease from the date of expiry of the service term mentioned above. After the cessation of the election for members of the Taiwan Provincial Council and the Governor of Taiwan Province, the adjustment of the functions, business, and organization of the Taiwan Provincial Government may be specially stipulated by law. In response to the streamlined provincial organization after the adjustment, the Executive Yuan established the Taiwan Provincial Government Functions, Business, and Organization Adjustment Committee on August 27, 1997, where the Premier of the Executive Yuan served as the convener. Moreover, six Task Forces were formed under the Committee, where the respective competent authorities served as the convening authority, conducting various planning operations and holding periodical coordination meetings. To properly handle provincial properties, the Ministry of Finance served as the convening authority for the Provincial Property Disposal Task Force. Meanwhile, in response to the needs of the composition of the Task Force and its operations, the Ministry of Finance formulated a work plan of the Provincial Property Disposal Task Force on April 3, 1998. For the Provincial Property Disposal Task Force, the Minister of Finance also served as the convener, the Political Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Finance served as the deputy convener, and the relevant business personnel from the National Property Bureau (which was adjusted to National Property Administration (NPA) on January 1, 2013) served as staff members. Members of the Task Force included senior business executives from the Directorate General of Budget, the Secretariat, and the Council of Agriculture (COA) of the Executive Yuan; the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Finance Department, Land Administration Department, and of the Agriculture and Forestry Department of the Taiwan Provincial Government; and the National Treasury Administration (NTA), Financial Service Bureau, Laws and Regulations Committee, and National Property Bureau (NPB) of the Ministry of Finance (MOF). These members were responsible for handling staff work related to provincial property disposal, planning, and promotion. According to Article 8 of the Provisional Act Governing the Adjustment of Functions, Business, and Organizations of the Taiwan Provisional Government, formulated by the Legislative Yuan, there were provisions related to assets of the Taiwan Provincial Government and responsibility arrangements thereof, as shown below: 1. Assets and liabilities of Taiwan Provincial Government shall be borne by the nation in general. 2. Properties owned by the Taiwan Provincial Government shall be transferred to national properties, which were to be kept, used, benefited from, and disposed of in accordance with the National Property Act. 3. For those properties transferred to the nation in the preceding paragraph, where such properties were public use properties operated by the provincial government, its affiliated agencies (institutions) and schools, they were handed over to the takeover agencies along with the business for management. Where such properties were public use properties originally operated by the central or local agencies, the business would remain managed by the original management agencies. And, where such properties were non-public use properties, they were managed by the National Property Bureau of the Ministry of Finance. 4. “Operating measures for transferring ownership of properties owned by the Taiwan Provincial Government to the nation, and the registration of changes by administration agencies” shall be formulated by the Ministry of Finance and submitted to the Executive Yuan for approval. In order to have guidelines for each agency to follow while handling transfer registration, the “Operating measures for transferring ownership of properties owned by Taiwan Provincial Government to the nation, and the registration of changes by administration agencies” was formulated by the Ministry of Finance, which was reported to the Executive Yuan for approval, approved on April 8, 1999, and promulgated on April 14, 1999 for implementation. To actually handle the take-over of the properties owned by the Taiwan Provincial Government, on March 18, 1999, a task-oriented office of the National Property Bureau, stationed in Zhongxing New Village, officially began its operations, and handled the related operations until June 30, 2000. Operations of transferring lands, premises, and securities to become national properties are listed as follows: Regarding the transfer of lands, there were a total of 489,680 transactions of lands (including 379,384 transactions for public use lands and 110,296 transactions for non-public use lands), covering an area of 86,115 hectares (including 57,307 hectares for public use lands and 28,808 hectares for non-public use lands). Regarding the transfer of premises, there were a total of 28,280 transactions of buildings (including 27,833 transactions for public use buildings and 447 for non-public use buildings), covering an area of 14,817,317 square meters (including 14,721,038 square meters for public use buildings and 96,279 square meters for non-public use buildings). Regarding the transfer of securities, a total of 301,563 lots of 28 companies were transferred, representing a total of 16,720,608,668 shares. Such stock shares, including six financial institutions such as Taiwan Cooperative Bank, were taken over by the National Treasury, totaling 27,238 lots, 2,958,076,817 shares. After stock shares of 22 companies, including Taiwan Power Company, totaling 274,325 lots, 13,762,531,851 shares were taken over by the National Property Bureau, except for those stock shares of two companies, namely Taiwan Tea Corporation (TTC) and Sanyang Securities, totaling 1,743 lots, 1,663,085 shares, the stock shares of the remaining 20 companies had been respectively transferred and allocated to the competent authorities of the target business, namely the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Council of Agriculture (COA) of the Executive Yuan, Government Information Office (GIO) of the Executive Yuan, and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), respectively, for the take-over.