Fiscal Backing For Policy Address

The Financial Secretary will provide full financial support to facilitate the early implementation of the initiatives in the 2019 Policy Address.

Responding to the newly unveiled Policy Address today, Acting Financial Secretary James Lau said the new initiatives cover a range of community concerns.

The focus on housing and land supply, improvement of people's livelihood and economic development underlines the Government's determination to bring benefits to the economy and people, especially at a time when Hong Kong is facing difficulties of an unprecedented degree, he said.

The Government will ensure the stability of its public finances and, in line with the Basic Law's requirement, strive to keep expenditure within the limits of revenues and avoid fiscal deficits.

It will also give effect to the new fiscal philosophy and use accumulated surpluses wisely for the community.

Noting the chaos in the meetings of the Finance Committee, House Committee and the full Council of the Legislative Council in recent days, Mr Lau called on lawmakers to embrace rational discussions rather than dissension.

He said lawmakers should, together with the Government, serve the people of Hong Kong and address their pressing needs by ensuring passage of the upcoming bills and funding applications.

He pointed out that many of the support measures rolled out in August and September, amounting to over $19.1 billion, cannot be implemented without funding approval from the LegCo.

Additionally, he said the second reading of a bill which seeks to implement the enhanced tax concessions for salaries tax, tax under personal assessment and profits tax for the year of assessment 2018-19 will resume in the next LegCo meeting.

Mr Lau added there is a significant backlog of funding applications for works projects from the last legislative session. Delays in the funding approval mean less work for the construction industry and will directly affect workers’ earnings.