'Flat supply has been uneven from year to year. This has sent confusing signals to the market, produced erratic patterns and left potential home buyers and developers in the lurch'
Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, 1997 policy address
And how right he was. Look at the chart for the evidence. You might think that changes in age, wealth and population across seven million people are consistent enough for the Government to be consistent in providing for the housing demand they create, but clearly this is not so.
This record, however, has not stopped Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen from pledging last week that the administration would 'strive to ensure a steady and sufficient land supply to meet the needs of our economy'.
In a speech to a fund-raising dinner, he was at pains to point out that this does not mean either propping up the property market or capping property prices, although he might remind Mr Tung not to talk of restraining price movements to the level of inflation.
The goal, Mr Tsang said, was 'simply to avoid a repetition of the unhealthy volatility prevalent in the market price in recent times. No more. No less . . . We have thus mapped out a steady supply of land for housing over the next decade, sufficient to meet a careful estimate of the likely needs of a growing and changing population'.
Now this is all very laudable but it raises some obvious questions. Does Mr Tsang mean to tell us that stability in land supply was never an objective of past administrations or that the key to achieving this objective has only now been found, and past administrations (in which he also held a position) could never do it?
