Blog

2018-19 Budget: Caring and sharing

A gist of the blog:

The initiatives put forward in the first Budget of the current-term Government are underpinned by three main objectives: (1) Diversified economy: we have to diversify our economy to create wealth for Hong Kong and provide wider and better development opportunities for our young people. (2) Investing for the future: we have to prepare facing the challenges posed by aging population and make Hong Kong an ideal smart city to work and to live in. (3) Caring and sharing: apart from materialistic improvements, we have to enhance the quality and substance of people’s lives as well. Caring and sharing is a key theme of the Budget. In addition to a series of new initiatives to alleviate tax burden of the salary earners, I also indicated in the Budget that I will invite the Community Care Fund to consider providing short-term relief targeting “N have-nots households”, so to help plugging the gaps of the proposed arrangements.

One-off and short-term initiatives cannot address the long-term needs of our community. This is the reason why I proposed to increase the long-term commitments on education, social welfare and healthcare in this Budget. In 2018-19, the estimated recurrent expenditure on these three areas accounts for about 60% of government recurrent expenditure, exceeding $230 billion in total. The increase of recurrent allocation can substantively improve public services and is far more effective than the one-off measures in supporting the people in need.

March 4, 2018