More Relief For Businesses

(To watch the video with sign language interpretation, click here.)

 

The Government today announced a new package of measures to support enterprises and employment during the economic downturn involving more than $4 billion.

 

Announcing the measures at a press briefing, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said this round is mostly targeted towards supporting businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

 

“Our concept is that by supporting businesses it will help safeguard employment. During an economic downturn, supporting employment is the number one priority of the Government.”

 

He announced nine measures in total, two of which benefit individuals.

 

“For example, the proposed increase in allowance for people receiving training from the Employees Retraining Board. Also, the instalment tax payment is also available to individuals. So what we have been trying to do is to balance the resources available to address the needs of the community.”

 

Taxpayers in need can apply for payment of profits tax, salaries tax and personal assessment for 2018-19 by instalments and the surcharge on tax outstanding could be waived for up to one year upon approval.

 

The Employees Retraining Board will enhance and extend the Love Upgrading Special Scheme including to consider increasing the maximum amount of monthly allowance per trainee from $4,000 to $5,800 through legislative amendment. The measures will involve about $350 million.

 

Mr Chan added that the Government aimed to ease the financial burden of citizens and businesses as soon as possible.

 

“The economic situation in Hong Kong is evolving very rapidly, responding to the external international environment as well as domestic social unrest. As the Government, we have been monitoring this very closely and assessing the impact on the businesses, especially SMEs, as well as the impact on our people.

 

“So instead of waiting for all these to develop and come up with one package, we do think that we should roll out measures as early as possible to relieve the burden of the people being seriously affected during this time.”

 

Other measures include the Government waiving 75% of water and sewage charges for non-domestic households from December 1 to March 31, next year, subject to a monthly cap of $20,000 and $12,500 per household per month.

 

Government revenue will be reduced by about $340 million and around 250,000 households will benefit.

 

An electricity subsidy will also be provided to each eligible non-residential electricity account holder to cover 75% of their monthly billed electricity charges, subject to a cap of $5,000 per account per month for four months. This involves about $2.3 billion and the number of beneficiaries will be about 430,000.

 

An enhanced rates concession will be provided to all non-domestic properties. The exemption ceiling for each non-domestic property chargeable to rates will be increased from $1,500 to $5,000 for the quarter from January 1 to March 31, next year. 

 

Government revenue will be further reduced by about $600 million and around 260,000 non-domestic properties will benefit.

 

Click here for all the measures.

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