By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-10 11:31:24 | Updated at 2025-03-10 14:03:10
2 hours ago
Hong Kong’s Construction Industry Council will allocate HK$150 million to subsidise companies training and retaining 2,500 graduates as it remains confident in the sector’s future despite a decline in private projects.
The council, a statutory body representing the construction sector, said on Monday that the scheme is intended to help businesses in difficult times by subsidising consultancy firms and main contractors to train employees who graduated from five professional disciplines.
“The government will boost its capital works expenditure in the coming five years. Despite a declining trend in the private market, I believe we still have a manpower demand and our scheme can take care of the 2,500 graduates,” Albert Cheng Ting-ning, the council’s executive director, said.
Announced in the annual budget last month, the government will issue bonds to raise funds as it expects the annual capital works expenditure to increase from HK$90 billion to HK$120 billion on average in the coming five financial years.
In recent years, there has been a lukewarm response from developers in bidding for government land, prompting lay-offs within architectural firms and business loss in some surveying companies.
The council’s scheme, also announced in the budget, targets graduates of engineering, architecture, surveying, planning and landscape architecture disciplines, who are aged 35 or below and have yet to obtain professional qualifications or receive similar subsidies.
