Monitor | Immigration and reclamation won't raise living standards
Our financial secretary wants to import more workers and create land, but Singapore's experience shows that will not make Hongkongers richer
John Tsang obviously doesn't read the South China Morning Post.
That's a shame, because if he did, Hong Kong's financial secretary might just save himself some embarrassment.
In his latest weekend blog posting, Tsang compared Hong Kong's economic performance unfavourably with Singapore's.
He wrote that between 2003 and 2012, Singapore's gross domestic product per head grew at a robust average rate of 6 per cent a year. Over the same period, Hong Kong's per capita output expanded at a relatively meagre 4 per cent rate.
Singapore, he claimed, had achieved its enviable growth by adding some 1.2 million immigrants to its workforce while increasing its land area by 30 square kilometres through massive reclamation projects.