Bricks and Mortar | Flats for Hongkongers scheme a failure

When the Hong Kong government said last week there was no urgency to continue the “Hong Kong property for Hong Kong people” scheme, it was tantamount to saying the initiative – introduced in 2012 to reserve selected new homes for the city’s residents – was a failure.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying suggested on Tuesday last week that when the programme was launched, it was a pilot scheme and would be used only when the market was getting too heated.

Leung said the market had cooled down as the number of buyers from outside Hong Kong had dropped to a very low level.

His remarks were seen as indirectly admitting that the scheme had been suspended and immediately triggered a debate over whether the government might ease other tightening measures.

But Secretary for Development Paul Chan Mo-po denied any such move was in the works.

Rather than the shelving of the programme heralding further easing of austerity measures, it is more likely that it is because the scheme isn’t working.

There are suggestions that the idea itself was not considered politically correct. Beijing is said to be increasingly impatient and frustrated with radical sentiment in Hong Kong after incidents including a rowdy anti-mainlander protest in February.