Land supply enough for years to come
Development Bureau releases figures as it tries to counter accusations that it is hoarding land and to win support for new towns project
The amount of vacant government land could be enough to support the city's housing supply for four years, the latest official figures suggest.
The Development Bureau released the figures to the Legislative Council yesterday after the Secretary for Development, Paul Chan Mo-po, was accused last month of being vague when explaining how much land was available for housing and of holding back stocks.
He said there were about 2,000 hectares of vacant government land, but about half was reserved for small houses. He made the comment to back the government's plan to develop three new towns in the New Territories to increase housing supply.
But a bureau spokesman said yesterday: "We want to tell people that it is not true that there is plenty of land lying idle and that the government is holding it back. The actual situation is that a lot of these sites are not necessarily developable. The new towns project is necessary to build up our land bank for the long term."
He said that of the 2,154 hectares of vacant public land zoned for residential use, only 391.5 hectares was suitable for housing, while a further 932.9 hectares was suitable for "village-type development", that is, small houses. The remaining areas were not suitable as they involved roads, man-made slopes or temporary public works.
The spokesman said the identified areas were still being studied before confirming they were suitable for housing, but refused to estimate how many homes they could yield.