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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
THE HON. LI WAH-MING (in Cantonese):-The second question is, at present the Council subsidizes nearly half of the cost for each ticket sold, will the total amount of subsidy for each cultural programme be shown after the activity?
MR. SUEN KAI-CHEONG (in Cantonese):-At present the subsidized is not reflected in the statement of account of the individual programme. It is reflected only in the income and expenditure account of URBTIX. Yet the programmes which pay high venue hire charges and contribute to the majority of the Council's revenue generated from hire charges are not reflected in the account.
MR. WU CHI-WAI (in Cantonese):-In the reply it was said that the current ticket charge per ticket is $3 but at earlier meetings we learnt that actually this is not the case. If a certain programme sells tickets very well, say, more than 100,000 tickets are sold, then the ticket charge will be lowered correspondingly. In other words, our policy is, if a certain programme is very popular, then the subsidy will be more than $3 per ticket, they may be as high as $4 per ticket. So I would like to ask, firstly, what are the considerations for setting such a standard?
Secondly, in general, what kind of programmes would be able to receive our additional subsidy? What I mean is, what kind of programmes can enjoy the lower charge that is offered to programmes with very good ticket sales?
MR. SUEN KAI-CHEONG (in Cantonese):-This is a fact. We hope this will provide some sort of incentive which will help to improve ticket sales, attendance rate and also box office income because the Council's revenue from venue hire charges is linked to the attendance rates of the programmes. If attendance rate and ticket sales are good, we can receive 20% of the ticket income, which is far more than the minimum charge. Suppose the minimum charge is $50,000, under the situation mentioned above, we may be able to receive $100,000 which is a lot more than the minimum charge. In this respect, on the surface it seems that we are increasing the subsidy but in fact we are getting more revenue through another way. Now unfortunately I am not the Chairman of the Urban Council Public Account Committee and I do not understand accounting too well. Perhaps Mr. Chairman is better than me on this. So, with regard to the total revenue, personally I think this is just like taking your money out from your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket. Perhaps it is difficult to know the real situation just looking at one account. If you look at all the accounts, you will find that this is not a subsidy at all. By the way, I want to mention one thing. In fact, our venue hire charge is higher than that of other countries. According to statistics, in the US the venue hire charge is 15% of the ticket revenue, but ours is 20%. Of course, this policy does not only involve the Administration Select Committee alone. To review this policy, other Select Committees, including the Culture Select Committee and the Entertainment Select Committee, would need to take part. I have no objection to Members' concern over this matter and the suggestion of
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