Letters | Will the coming Hong Kong budget be on ordinary people’s wavelength?
Readers discuss the concerns of Hongkongers ahead of the budget, animal adoption, and seat belt rules
Hong Kong residents are waiting with bated breath for the release of the annual budget next month.
Getting into debt to pay off other debt is no recipe for a happy life and this also applies to public finance. Yet our government is planning to issue more debt to support its expenses.
In the past, government coffers were mainly filled with revenue from land sales and we were worry-free. But now the tide has turned. Amid a sector downturn, that revenue source dried up drastically and commercial land sales had to be paused.
The government bonds are to be issued to finance infrastructure projects. It can be expected that this will be the financial instrument the government needs to deploy for a few years.