Speech by Financial Secretary to the
Foreign Correspondents' Club on 16 September 1983
The Hong Kong economy has shown encouraging recent Though there are still problem areas, including
inflation' and
the exchange rate of the
developments.
the property market,
Hong Kong dollar, it is clear that an export-led recovery is
underway.
2.
a
For the purpose of making my budget forecast this
year, I took the view that the economy
the economy of our largest market, the United States, would stage a mild but growing recovery in 1983, with most of the growth occurring in the second half. I assumed that it would grow by 2.5% in real terms for the year
whole, but a
I said that should it pick up at faster
rate, the budget
budget forecast growth rate of the GDP of 4% for Hong Kong could well turn out to be conservative. This seemed a prudent standpoint. Statistics for the first half year now indicate that the recovery in the US economy nas indeed
occurred sooner and been stronger than expected.
as
both consequence,
independent economic
the
As a
US Administration and various
forecasters have repeatedly revised upwards their forecasts of real GNP growth, though a degree of tailing off must be expected. The economic performance and outlook of а number of our other major export markets have
also improved.
3.
Arising from the revival in consumer demand in these
markets, our domestic export growth has gathered momentum
since the beginning of this year. The second quarter was much
better than the first. Growth is continuing. Comparing the
first nalf of this year with the same period last year, domestic exports of goods have grown by 14% in money terms, or
1
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