OpinionBureaucrats at sixes and sevens
Those running the Mega Events Fund have done HK a huge disfavour by rejecting help for city's popular cricket tournament
First it was tennis - the Hong Kong Classic - and now the cricket Sixes. Hong Kong is rapidly turning into a sporting desert. The much-touted Mega Events Fund, which was supposed to transform this city into a sporting paradise, has instead become a harbinger of doom. Both the tennis and cricket tournaments were supported by the MEF, but now they have been shunned.
If from the outset they had been turned down, then one could say both events were fundamentally flawed and failed to meet the criteria for funding. But tennis received funding twice and cricket once, in 2011, and now they have been cast aside.
Trying to fathom the reasoning behind these decisions is all but pointless. It would take a sage with the wisdom of a Solomon to unravel the reasons behind the rejections of a committee of bureaucrats.
Even misers would realise it is best to part with some money when the very core of your existence is threatened
Despite ticking all of the main boxes, the Hong Kong Sixes was twice turned down this year. Okay, maybe asking for HK$10 million was a tad too ambitious but when told to come back with a reduced plea - and this by a senior official at the MEF - one might have thought the tournament would get funding. But a revamped bid for HK$5 million was also shot down, despite the Sixes meeting all the objectives of the fund, mainly to raise the profile of the city internationally, promote it as an events capital of Asia and boost tourism.
When you think that the MEF has nearly HK$200 million in its coffers, it's ridiculous that an application for less than 3 per cent of the total sum available would be rejected. Previously, we had labelled the assessment committee of the MEF, which comes under the government's Tourism Commission, as a bunch of misers. We were wrong, for even misers would realise it is best to part with some money when the very core of your existence is threatened. And the decision by the Hong Kong Cricket Association to cancel the Sixes next month raises the question of the validity of the MEF's continued existence.
Created in 2009 as a conduit to channel funds from the government to enterprises that could showcase the city as a happening place, the MEF failed miserably. When its initial three-year term ended, it still had almost half the HK$100 million of the original fund unspent. The government then added another HK$150 million last year for a five-year period.
So far, little of it has been spent. It seems more time is spent on looking for flaws in applications and knocking them back than encouraging entrepreneurs to start something new.