Government plans to sell another $10b of mortgage loans this year
The government plans to sell another $10 billion worth of mortgage loans this year, according to Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Frederick Ma Si-hang.
'The government has a lot of loans, including the mortgage loans made to first-time home buyers' scheme and the other lending offered to the civil servants,' Mr Ma said in Guangzhou yesterday.
He refused to give more details on the plans, but market sources said the $10 billion loans would soon be sold to the Hong Kong Mortgage Corp (HKMC), a government body formed to buy home loans and then repackage them into debt papers for resale to investors.
The loan sale would represent almost half of the government asset disposal plans this year.
The government has said it plans to sell $21 billion worth of assets this year.
Earlier this year, it sold $4.8 billion worth of civil servant mortgage loans to the HKMC.
Mr Ma said other sale plans this year would include the securitisation of the fee income of the five tunnels and the Tsing Ma Bridge, but he declined to say how much this might raise.
He said a listing of the airport would be more difficult because it would require law changes.
'The listing of the shares of the Airport Authority asset would not be something that happens in the near future,' he said.
Mr Ma said he was still confident the government could meet its $21 billion target.
'I think government assets are welcomed by investors,' he said.
Mr Ma was in Guangzhou yesterday to attend the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing roadshow. He and the exchange's chief executive Paul Chow Man-yiu visited the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in the morning and held meetings with Guangdong vice-governor Song Hai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange chairman Chen Dongzheng.
'There are a lot of co-operation opportunities between Hong Kong and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. But you can't expect we could work out much of the details in a 30-minute meeting,' Mr Ma said.
