The Government has offered big income tax concessions and increased payouts for the needy in the 1996-97 budget.
Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen marked his maiden budget by also unveiling an action plan to help turn the territory into the premier regional centre for trade, manufacturing and service industries.
However, he disclosed a sharp fall in gross domestic products from a forecast 5.5 per cent to 4.6 per cent and a deficit of $2.5 billion for 1995-96.
China is conducting nine days of live-ammunition exercises (March 13 to today) off Taiwan's southwest coast, deploying scores of jet fighters, submarines and surface vessels. Meanwhile, Taiwan has put its 400,000 strong military on heightened alert, while the United States is moving warships and aircraft carriers closer to the island. Analysts believe that China's military exercise is aimed at disrupting Taiwan's presidential election, to be held on Wednesday.
Three Hong Kong journalists from Eastweek magazine were stopped while trying to conduct interviews in the vicinity of China's military exercises. The journalists had flown to Fuzhou to get information about the exercises. Two Taiwanese television journalists were expelled earlier for 'illegally videotaping military targets'.
Hundreds of police and Correctional Services officers massed outside the gates of the High Island detention centre after negotiations collapsed with Vietnamese inmates holding a guard hostage.
The drama erupted as Hong Kong's top refugee officials met the international community in Geneva in a bid to bring an end to the presence of boat people in the territory and elsewhere in the region.
