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Recurrent spending on social welfare will grow by 13.2 per cent in real terms to $13.0 billion.
"Special benefits include for the elderly an extra 1,489 residential places, 23 social centres, four day care centres and three multi-service centres; 1,287 extra residential places for the handicapped and discharged mental patients, a further 988 day places for the handicapped, 20 more day places for discharged mental patients and 471 more pre-school day places for disabled children.
"For children generally, there will be an extra 1,400 day nursery places, 250 day creche places and 12 small group homes.
"And in addition to the normal inflation adjustment there will be an extra $205 per month for children and $200 extra per month for single parent families under the comprehensive social security assistance scheme," Mr Tsang said.
On health, recurrent spending will grow by 7.7 per cent in real terms to $19.8 billion.
"New facilities will include 807 additional hospital beds, 70 geriatric hospital day places, four new health centres, four diabetic care centres, a new general outpatients clinic.
"In addition, we will introduce a new student health service to provide preventive and promotive health care for all primary students, hospice care for an additional 400 patients a year, an expansion of the renal dialysis programme, significantly reduced waiting times for cataract surgery and improved treatment for patients with ischaemic heart disease," he said.
On education, recurrent spending will grow in real terms by 4.9 per cent to $30.3 billion.
"This increased level of spending should be viewed in the light of a declining school age population (the number of children in the 6-16 age group will drop from 877,900 in 1994-95 to 866,900 in 1995-96). As a result, we will be able to achieve further improvements in pupil-teacher ratios in both primary and secondary schools and to reduce primary school class sizes.