AND HERE is an update on the latest white-elephant project to prove that Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung must have his head in the clouds if he thinks any of his government colleagues are really prepared to cut expenditure.
It is the proposed HK$4 billion exhibition centre at the airport, the one for which funding was blocked last month by the Legislative Council's finance committee after members questioned its financial viability.
They had some firepower on their side. The original consultants (PKF, now PricewaterhouseCoopers) also questioned it. '. . . the potential centre may not be financially viable from a standard commercial development standpoint', says a government synopsis of their report.
But have you ever heard of a consultant who would recommend not going ahead with a project when the official support for it had already been mustered? Consultants like unemployment no more than anyone else.
Having thus covered his . . . ahem . . . the author of this one resorted to consultobabble to justify his disdain of the facts - 'the economic cost/benefit analysis shows that the subject property could generate significant benefits for the Hong Kong economy. These benefits are not only measurable in Hong Kong dollar values, but also in non-quantifiable terms that would have an indirect impact on the market'.
Excuse me, sir, but if they are 'non-quantifiable' how can you claim they are 'measurable'? We shall leave this point aside, however.
