The juicy part, how Sir Hamish will juggle levies and taxes, will have to wait until March 2.

Sir Hamish will then move a motion on March 9 to ask for an interim provision of $53.1 billion to ensure the civil service will not be disrupted before the 1994-95 Appropriation Bill is passed in April.

The provisional funding traditionally amounts to about a quarter of what the Government needs for its recurrent expenses in the following financial year. On this basis, public spending next year will be largely in line with the figure for the current year.

The timing of the release of the expenditure figures tomorrow is set to clash with the gazetting of the second part of the Governor, Mr Chris Patten's electoral initiatives for 1995.

Mr Patten is expected to give the British account of the ill-fated, 17 rounds of Sino-British secret talks on constitutional reform for Hong Kong, during Legco's question time this afternoon.

Beijing is bound to respond with its own version of what went wrong with the negotiations. So local discussions on the Budget are likely to be dwarfed by the subsequent row between the two sovereign powers.

The Governor is expected to push for his original reform plan as outlined in his maiden policy speech. This will trigger a new round of debate on how the future Election Committee and the nine new functional constituencies should be defined.

The Chinese side is also preparing to name its first batch of District Affairs Advisers and the third batch of Hong Kong Affairs Advisers on March 2.

This will immediately double the pool of China nominees in Hong Kong to more than 400. That development will also undoubtedly compete for media space with Sir Hamish's Budget.

However, the public is unlikely to be taken by surprise by the content of next week's budgetary proposals.

Sir Hamish estimated a small deficit of $3.3 billion for the 1993-94 financial year. But this has turned out to be a gross underestimation of the territory's economic performance.

He has conceded that this financial year will finish with a moderate surplus. Fiscal reserves by 1997 are projected to reach $120 billion. This will be well over the $50 billion threshold stipulated by the Sino-British Memorandum of Understanding on the new airport.

The amount derived from land sales before the 1997 handover will contribute a further $80 billion to the Special Administrative Region's coffers.

Although the Government has committed itself to injecting $60 billion into Chek Lap Kok's airport terminal and rail link, officials stress this commitment will not affect regular public spending.

In these financially comfortable circumstances, all major political parties have called for substantial concessions for taxpayers.

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong and the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood want personal tax allowances to be raised by a minimum of $12,000 to $78,000.

The Liberal Party has asked for an increase of $5,000. But it has repeated its call on the Government to cut the 17.5 per cent profits tax by one percentage point.

And Sir Hamish is expected to be more amenable on the issue of handing out concessions on salary tax.

But increases in personal allowance for 1994-95 will not be as generous as this year. Sir Hamish's first budget was passed only after he promised legislators he would give more relief to the middle classes in his next budget.

Personal allowances were subsequently raised by a hefty 22 per cent. This will reduce revenues by an estimated $17 billion before 1997.

This exceptional tax break is highly unlikely to be repeated.

Political parties should consider it a victory if personal allowances go up a few points above inflation.

Given the comfortable financial buffer, however, there is also no compelling reason for the Government to raise the levels of other levies.

Moreover, the Governor last October pre-empted much of the Budget. In his second policy speech, Mr Patten outlined a set of social improvement programmes which will carry a non-recurrent price tag of $15 billion for the next few years.

All signs point to an unexciting, housekeeping-style Budget on Wednesday, which will probably be eclipsed by the escalating Sino-British political confrontation.