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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
years. This is a fact. Isn't it time for us to conduct a review? Are we taking up the role of monitoring effectively? Have we checked to see if each item of the Department's expenditure meets public demand and is at the same time cost effective? Have we been able to get the best results with the smallest expenditure? I believe we should strengthen our monitoring function.
At the meeting of the Finance Select Committee at the end of January, I submitted a paper in which I listed many concrete suggestions for generating revenue and cutting cost. Mr. CHAN Choi-hi mentioned some of them. I would like to add one or two more points here. On generating revenue, I feel that in 'keeping expenditure within the limit of revenue', 'revenue' should not be limited to rates revenue. Rather, revenue should include rental income. Has the Council optimized the use of our venues and assets to increase our rental income? In fact, we have a lot of venues. What we lack are facilities such as coffee shops, book shops, sports facilities or sports goods shops. If we allocate space at our venues for these facilities of commercial value, I believe we can offer greater convenience to the public as well as increase our income. I think we should seriously consider this.
On cutting cost, I have said time and again that I would like to see the removal of restraints imposed by the Memorandum of Administrative Arrangement as soon as possible. Once that restraint is removed, we will be free to procure services equivalent to those provided by government department from private bodies on the market. I believe with the removal of this restraint, we will have more flexibility, more savings and better cost effectiveness.
Mr. Chairman, I do not support the amended motion by Mr. Wu Chi-wai of the Democratic Party. I think we do not need extra funding to maintain our service qualities. I can see that for any set-up of the scale of the Urban Council and the Urban Services Department, a small saving makes a huge difference. I also think that the needs of the public are more important. We can see that a lot of expenditure items are wasted. We have noticed a lot of wastages. Many of them are the result of delay in works projects, others have arisen because of mismanagement. For example, the vacant market stalls mentioned just now result in reduction of our rental income. I think this situation presents a challenge to our Members. I think we should explore sources of revenue and cut expenditure within the framework of our $8.7 billion rates income and other sources of income. A review should be conducted with a view to providing continual service in the most cost effective way. The framework should not affect our capital works projects. In fact, capital works make up just a small portion of our three-year budget. The largest item of expenditure is USD's personal emolument representing 55% of our total expenditure. Can we review this? There is certainly room for this.
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