THE COMMISSIONER FOR Census and Statistics, Frederick Ho Wing-huen, can have done himself few favours in the halls of power with a recent study that considerably trims back Hong Kong's population forecasts.
This is not what the build-build-build lobby that dominates policy decisions wants to hear. These people want ammunition for yet more roadways and infrastructure but Mr Ho has taken the bang out of their big guns.
The first chart is a rather busy one but it sets out the story as succinctly as I can do it. We start with the short red line at the left-hand side of the chart. This represents actual recorded population up to the end of last year. That figure was 6.81 million people and the annual population growth at that time was only 0.35 per cent.
The blue line continuing on from it shows the Census and Statistics Department's latest forecast. Take note immediately that, although it is the lowest line on this chart, it still represents an almost tripling of population growth to 0.92 per cent in 2010. The growth then slows down and we get to a forecast of 8.38 million people in 2033.
But this is not as yet the forecast on which long-range planning studies are based. That particular forecast is the one in the Strategy 2030 initiative and it is shown here in the green line. It envisions a population in 2030 of 9.16 million people, 885,000 more than in the latest C&S study.
Notice from the difference between the red and green lines how out of date the Strategy 2030 study already is. It says that at the end of last year we should have had 6.95 million people, 144,000 more than actually recorded. It anticipated a population growth rate of 1.34 per cent last year, not the 0.35 per cent we actually got.
Now if you think this is hardly a big difference, take note that it would represent an addition 46,500 households, all of which would have had housing needs. We are talking here of the equivalent of a full year of completions of public rental and private housing. The smallest differences in demographic numbers can have enormous implications for planning projections.
