Interest sought for logistics park before financial approval
The government is to gauge business interest in a proposed $1.3 billion logistics park on north Lantau despite not having received financial approval or having conducted an environmental impact study for the reclamation project.
The Economic Development and Labour Bureau said it would ask 3,600 companies for ideas on the 'planning parameters' for the logistics park, to be built on 72 hectares of reclaimed land near Siu Ho Wan.
'We will be conducting an environmental impact assessment that will be a component of the feasibility study,' Sandra Lee Suk-yee, permanent secretary for economic development and labour, told the Legislative Council's transport committee yesterday.
'The administration would have to reclaim the land before we put it out to the private sector.'
According to Crow Maunsell Management Consultants, which had assessed the demand for such a facility, the park would 'provide an operating environment in Hong Kong that would promote modern logistics services'.
The logistics park concept was first suggested four years ago in a Maunsell report commissioned by the government, but the consultants said yesterday the earliest it could be opened now was in 2010. Such a facility would be a one-stop shop for logistical requirements, with freight, storage and transfer facilities.
While accepting there was demand, legislators said yesterday the project would take too long to build and cost too much. They also accused the government of putting the cart before the horse.
'How can companies express an interest in the project without knowing how much it will cost to use?' asked Miriam Lau Kin-yee, representative for the transport constituency.
'Whenever reclamation is involved, projects become so expensive. Are there no other sites that do not require reclamation?'
She said the government might have already painted itself into a corner on the proposed project.
To make the user costs cheap enough, she said, the government would have to abandon any prospect of recovering its capital costs for the project, inviting accusations of preferential treatment for the logistics industry. Yet if it tried to recover its costs, the park could be too expensive for small and medium-sized firms to use.
Ms Lee said the government had not decided whether it would lease or sell land to prospective users, nor had it decided who would manage the park.
Committee chairman James Tien Pei-chun told her: 'The panel appears to support the project in principle, but that does not mean that when you come back to the [finance committee] we will support you again. When you come for funding, you may want to be prepared to answer more questions.'
