Why it was ‘unfair’ to expect anything different from Paul Chan’s maiden budget for Hong Kong
Law Chi-kwong says it was more of the same after majority of measures were already announced in policy address
To expect Financial Secretary Paul Chan, who is just two months into his post, to do something very different from previous budgets of the Hong Kong government is basically unrealistic and unfair.
Judging from the 2017-18 budget, Chan has inherited the basic fiscal policies of previous financial secretaries. And to a certain extent, there are many parts in his budget speech that appear to have been copied and pasted from previous budget speeches.
For instance, the relief measures – a salaries tax reduction, rates waiver and an extra one month social security payments – are all copied from the 2016-17 budget, and the profits tax reduction is copied from the 2015-16 budget.
On the areas relating to social policies – particularly health, education, retirement protection and welfare – the budget has only spelt out the dollar values of the initiatives and service expansion provisions that were announced in the policy address and policy agenda just five weeks ago.
Apart from what was already revealed in the policy address and policy agenda, there are only a few things that we now know more about from the budget.
