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the
I hope the Government
will
affecting environmental hygiene. promptly allocate funds to repair or redevelop facilities in the old urban area, and to draw up a long-term plan for it. I trust that the Land Development Corporation, esentix est nied, in its programme to redevelop the old areas and actively co-ordinate these improvement plans to better the environment.
in the
will
This year's budget proposes a growth
the Civil Service of about four per cent. This is higher than
2.5 the per cent in the past. The administration needs more staff to handle a growing volume of work. This is understandable and reasonable but I hope that the Government should be more careful in the deployment of staff so that no department will have too many staff or too few staff, and that no expenditure will be wasted. In
order that
that the public will not be overburdened with excessive public expenditure, the Government should carefully keep in view the expansion rate of the Civil Service and the problem of staff
deployment.
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surpluses, the
Sir, even though we have huge
administration still proposes the extension of
indirect taxation and the idea of a sales tax.
The Financial
Secretary wishes to seek public views on this but he has not given 24 more hints on the proposed scope of the sales tax; how it will be If the Financial Secretary
public opinions, he should provide more Obviously, this proposal is very unfair to
levied and what its rate will be.
detailed information.
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really wants to seek
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the low-income group. We all know that any indirect tax or sales tax will tax the poor and the rich alike, even though different people earn different incomes. The levy of a sales tax will have different impacts on the high-income group and the lower income groups. To increase the indirect taxes on daily necessities and
entertainment activities will have little effect on the high-income group, but will be an extra burden to people with lower incomes.
In other words, the burden of increasing indirect taxation is
inversely proportional to people's income. Those who earn less