Walter Kwok urges revival of land exchange scheme
Former SHKP chief calls for the revival of the programme that ran until 1983 to speed up the redevelopment plans for the New Territories
The government should revive land exchange entitlements to speed up its plan for large-scale rural redevelopment in the New Territories, according to Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, the former chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties.
From the 1960s until 1983, the government issued certificates of entitlement, commonly known as Letter B certificates, to village landlords in the New Territories when it wished to acquire land for rural redevelopment.
During that time, residents of the New Territories who held land that had been in their families since before the Convention of Peking in 1898 objected to their ancestral heritage being exchanged for cash.
In lieu of compensation, the government offered the landowners certificates promising a future land grant in the New Territories at a fixed exchange ratio.
Kwok said yesterday: "With Letter B certificates, the government can successfully acquire land from farmers' hands and make its northeast New Territories new development areas plan go ahead. I understand the government is considering [the feasibility of the idea]."
Residents of the New Territories "may not agree to sell if the government just acquires the land for cash", Kwok said, but it would be easier to get them to surrender the sites by issuing them with Letter B certificates.
It is understood that developers including Henderson Land Development, New World Development and SHKP own some of the land in the northeast New Territories.