Blog

Junior Financial Secretary

To better understand young people's aspirations and ideas, some budget consultation and exchange sessions we arranged were targeted at young people. Indeed, some initiatives in this year's Budget were inspired from my exchanges with the youths or even children.

During my visits to some secondary and primary schools, I had a chance to understand their popular science education, and to visit their laboratories and related facilities. In another occasion, a group of secondary students handed in their Budget proposals, suggesting the Government to allocate more resources to schools for enhancing the teaching support of STEM subjects and providing more diversified activities, with a view to boosting the interests of students and nurturing more local technology talents for Hong Kong.

Their views prompted me to deploy $500 million to implement the IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Programme in the coming three school years, so that more information technology (IT)-related extra-curricular activities could be arranged for the students. Given the importance of IT in innovation and technology and today's digital world, with a better IT foundation, students would be able to develop their knowledge in the principles of computer science and programming, as well as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data.

After building up their knowledge, students may also apply them in resolving social problems such as city management, transport, healthcare and elderly care, etc. If innovation solutions can be developed, they may even start their own businesses.

The Budget has also earmarked $300 million to expedite the development of a geospatial data sharing platform and 3D digital maps of the territory, with a view to facilitating the dissemination, utilisation and innovative application of geospatial data. Students who are interested in maps and related applications may keep in view the development.

In an exchange session last week, a sports-enthusiastic student expressed his disappointment that the Budget only allocated $250 million in supporting Hong Kong athletes, which is even less than the $600 million allocated for refurbishing public toilets. This is in fact a misunderstanding since the $250 million funding allocated this year only forms a small part of the Government's continuous efforts in supporting sports development in Hong Kong.

In the Budget of the last two years, I injected $1 billion and then $5 billion into the Elite Athletes Development Fund to strengthen our support for elites athletes. In addition, I injected $1 billion into the Sport Development Fund to support the training of athletes and hosting competitions. Another $100 million was allocated for the launch of a District Sports Programmes Funding Scheme to encourage wider community participation in sports.

As most athletes would retire from sports before the age of 40, many of them wish to pursue academic studies in parallel with athletic trainings. The $250 million injection to the Hong Kong Athletes Fund in the Budget this year aims to serve this purpose by increasing scholarship awards in support of the dual-track development of athletes, as well as providing more incentives for full-time athletes when they retire from sports.

As regards the refurbishment of public toilets, it is to address the public's expectation on the continuous improvement and upgrading of municipal facilities. We will spend $600 million in the coming five years to refurbish 240 toilets, that is $120 million per year.

Apart from refurbishing public toilets, we have also put in resources for the improvement of other municipal facilities in the past two Budgets. For instance, I earmarked $20 billion in the 2017-18 Budget for launching 26 projects in five years to develop new or improve existing sports and recreation facilities in different districts, including sports grounds, sports centres, football pitches, swimming pools, cycling grounds, tennis courts and open spaces. In the last Budget, I set aside $8 billion for the building of community complexes, parks and improving pedestrian links in 18 districts, and also $2 billion for the modernisation of existing public markets. What other municipal facilities do you see a need for refurbishment? Suggestions are welcome and we shall take them into account in preparing the Budget next year.

March 17, 2019