Short-term sweeteners will not be given away in the budget every year, Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah warned yesterday, three days after he unveiled a series of tax and short-term relief measures that cost HK$38.8 billion.
Together with other spending initiatives in the budget, the financial chief believed the stimulus measure would boost GDP by 1.1 per cent this year.
Tsang said yesterday that since the government started giving away sweeteners a few years ago when the financial tsunami hit, he had been hoping to give away less.
“Actually, every since we started doing it in the first year, I wanted to give away less as soon as possible. But the global economic condition has been consistently bad. It is unexpected that the condition has been like this for such a long time,” he said.
He warned that the short-term measures the government had adopted given away over the years would not be on offer every single year.
On Wednesday, he announced that the basic allowance and the single parents’ allowance – now HK$120,000 – would be raised to HK$132,000 in the coming financial year. The married person’s allowance will be increased from HK$240,000 to HK$264,000. The three increases will benefit 1.93 million taxpayers while reducing tax revenue by HK$2.9 billion.
