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Why you can trust SCMP
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THE DUCK AND DIVE award this week goes to Transport Secretary Nicholas Ng Wing-fui who told legislators on Wednesday that he would pass on their pleas for lower fares to the bus and train companies but would not compel them to cut fares.

A non-binding motion (what ones in Legco are not?) urging fare cuts was of course the usual case of opposition legislators making proposals that they know they will never be held responsible for carrying out, just as government deference to these motions is the usual proof that they have already been dropped in the bin.

However, let us look at this one more closely. It used to be the case that the bus companies were subject to a rigorous profit-control scheme. Their distributable earnings were limited to 13 per cent of their average net fixed assets and there were strict rules about what would happen if the figure went higher.

They still had to apply for fare increases if it was lower but the rigour of the scheme meant that fare changes were instituted more by mechanism than political decision.

Things have changed. Last year the Government adopted a 'Modified Basket of Factors Approach'. If this seems confusing jargon to you, well, that is just what it is. The 13 per cent figure has now become a 'flexible' one and the rigorous mechanism is gone. The Government can choose whatever return it wishes to bestow on the bus companies.

So right away that makes Mr Ng a ducker and diver. He can tell the bus companies to change their fares if he wishes. He always could, of course, but he is freer than ever now to do it. The process has become political.

Should he do it?

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