Airport Authority to offer third runway plan with lower user charge in a month

The Airport Authority says it will present a revised financing proposal for the third runway to the government with "considerably lower" user charges than the previously proposed HK$180 levy on each departing passenger.

"We are confident that we will be able to reduce [the proposed levy], and hopefully in a month or so we will be able to revert to the government with a revised proposal," the authority's executive director of corporate development, Wilson Fung, said yesterday.

Speaking at a briefing at the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Fung declined to indicate the scale of the levy reduction but said it would be "considerable".

"But just bear in mind, whatever amount we will be able to reduce from charging the passengers, it will have to come from something else - we will possibly have to further stretch our borrowing level, meaning we will have to borrow a bit more," he said.

The government asked the authority to study the possibility of reducing the passenger charge after the Executive Council gave the green light to the Airport Authority's financing proposal for the HK$141.5 billion third runway in March. The authority had proposed one third self-funding, one third borrowing and one third from user charges.

The Airport Authority said it would retain its dividend payable to its sole shareholder, the Hong Kong government, from now until the runway's expected completion in 2023. It has paid the government dividends totalling HK$36 billion since 2003.