6
budgetary difficulties, these projects will go ahead. Even in the current
difficult economic climate, the level of commitments for new works that
will be entered into in 1983-84 is $3 billion, roughly the same as the
average level over the last four years.
The actual amount Government spent on capital works last year
was $6.5 billion the highest ever. The main thrust of this considerable
investment was in the New Towns and in Hong Kong's transport system.
Expenditure on works so far this year has been somewhat dampened by the
poor weather, but the year's total is still expected to exceed last
year's by about $1 billion, and this represents a further increase in
real terms. These figures do not include the substantial expenditure
on the public housing programme undertaken by the Housing Authority.
Rapid progress is being made on developing Hong Kong's
communications networks, with high priority attached to the development
of the MTR Island Line, the modernization of the Kowloon-Canton Railway
and the upgrading of the road network. The electrification of the
Kowloon-Canton Railway is almost complete. Nearly $400 million will be
spent this year on Stages I and II of the Hong Kong Island Easter
Corridor road, $200 million on the Tsuen Wan Bypass and its associated
reclamation works, and $270 million on a trunk road from Sha Tin to Tal
Po.
Responding to Hong Kong's intemational communications needs,
detailed planning is in hand to ensure that the airport at Kai Tak will
have the capacity to meet the growth in passenger traffic forecast for
at least the rest of this decade. This has had to take precedence over
longer-term plans for the development of a new airport on Lantau Island
-
an undertaking so vast that it would have interfered over a number of
years with the fulfillment of Hong Kong's more basic needs such as publio
/housing. For