profitable to the community, so indicates.
remain conservatively within our guidelines.
it
In the meantime we
In today's world
refreshing to be largely debt free with considerable
fiscal reserves.
15.
The
In my budget speech I again stressed the importance of restraining public sector expenditure and the need to
ensure that the growth rate of public sector expenditure should have regard to the
the growth rate of the
of the economy.
latest estimate
would say intelligent gue88 expenditure on the Consolidated Account, based on performance over the first five months, is $41.2 billion, representing a decrease of $1.3 billion over the budget estimate.
16.
-
Боле
of
As a general rule the growth rate of public sector expenditure over a period should not outrun the growth rate of the economy, So that the Government does not pre-empt resources that would otherwise be used more effectively by the private sector for export purposes. Thus the growth rate of public sector expenditure and the relative size of the public
sector inust and will continue to be closely monitored. This will involve difficult and indeed disputatious selection of
programme priorities; but I emphasise that the control 15 on
growth. There nave not been cutbackB in public spending.
message nas not yet
not yet fully been
fully been taken. At present there
18 an outstanding commitment, I repeat commitment, of about $24.5 billion 10 respect of public works projects in hand.
This represents a nuge forthcoming investment in social and economic infrastructure and illustrates the Government's firm
intention of investing vigorously for the future.
This
17.
Turning now to my GDP forecast, the performance of the economy in the first half of this year and
year and the generally prospects of Hong Kong's major trading
improving economic
partners
indicate that my
cautious
budget
forecast of
7
expenditure