By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-15 08:56:41 | Updated at 2025-01-15 12:51:36
4 hours ago
A Hong Kong party headed by a top government adviser has suggested increasing traffic fines, tunnel fees and property rates, as well as freezing civil service salaries, in a bid to reduce the city’s deficit.
Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, chairwoman of the New People’s Party and convenor of key decision-making body the Executive Council, also proposed a 5 per cent cut in government recurrent spending, following a meeting with finance chief Paul Chan Mo-po on Wednesday.
“The financial secretary has mentioned cutting public expenditure by 1 per cent. With a civil service workforce of over 190,000, we believe there must be more room to trim, and the government can afford a more drastic cut,” she said.
The party’s austerity proposals also included freezing the salaries of all civil servants and suspending recruitment for six months. The party said it believed authorities could “proactively optimise human resource management and improve cost-effectiveness” to maintain public service.
Chan, who will deliver his budget speech in late February, earlier said he would focus on spending cuts as the current financial year was expected to end with a deficit of just under HK$100 billion (US$12.9 billion), about double what he had forecast a year ago.
A day earlier, the Liberal Party advised the finance chief to scale back the HK$2 concessionary fare scheme for the elderly and disabled residents by cutting the subsidy level or pulling the plug for commuters aged 60 to 64.
