Global Financial Market Review

The Housing Authority said on Wednesday that the average wait for a public housing flat as of the end of September had been shortened from six to 5.6 years.

The average waiting time for elderly individual applicants, meanwhile, dropped from 4.1 to 3.9 years.

The authority attributed the improvement to the allocation of more than 10,000 public housing units in the third quarter of this year.

Sze Lai-shan, deputy director of the Society for Community Organisation, said while the news is welcome, it's still not good enough.

"I have been looking forward to the decrease of waiting time. It's good for the people, and that means the supply of public housing is going faster. But of course it's still not good [enough], because 5.6 years is still very long time. I think ideally it should be three years," she said.

The Federation of Public Housing Estates also welcomed the news, but said the average wait is unlikely to drop sharply given the low number of newly built public housing units.

The group added that it hopes officials will divulge more details about the light public housing scheme as soon as possible, such as the selection of sites and timetable for development.

Chief Executive John Lee said in his Policy Address in October that the government's target is to shorten the average waiting time for public housing to 4.5 years in four years.