Editorial | Finance chief faces toughest of challenges in delivering budget
- Hong Kong has suffered from the US-China trade war, months of political unrest and the coronavirus; all eyes are now on Financial Secretary Paul Chan to introduce a spending blueprint that is both caring and visionary
The government budget to be delivered on Wednesday will be a most difficult task for Paul Chan Mo-po. Facing a record high deficit and a deepening public health crisis, the challenges for the financial secretary are unprecedented.
The room for manoeuvring is further limited following several rounds of multibillion-dollar relief packages to mitigate the fallout of the United States-China trade war and Hong Kong’s political unrest.
Thankfully, we have robust fiscal reserves. How to make good use of our hard-earned savings to help the needy and get us back on a stronger footing for recovery will be the major test for Chan.
Even the smartest finance chiefs could not have foreseen the rapid economic decline triggered by the changing sociopolitical environment over the past eight months.
Delivering his third budget last February, Chan was optimistic that gross domestic product would grow by 2-3 per cent. But the months-long unrest sparked by the anti-extradition bill movement in June saw the economy contract by 1.2 per cent last year, the first decline since 2009.