6 -
But it could be very misleading, if I may say so Eric, to try to aggregate all of them into one whole figure. And then, because some of them are actual plans where there is no price-tag for them for the time being.
Question (Commercial Radio) (in Cantonese): Mr Tsang, you said for the 97-98 Budget you will be consulting the Chinese side, so would you first of all prepare the Budget and then listen to the views of the Chinese side, or how would you do it? And how would you take up discussions with the Chief Executive Designate?
FS (in Cantonese): Miss Ko, we have already laid down some criteria. I don't think it is a matter of who is taking the lead, what is important is that we have some initial consensus on the matter. Now at the last session of the Expert Group's Meeting. Mr Kwong has already talked to Mr Chen that we will be doing a full year budget but as to how we are going to prepare the budget and how we are going to conduct the consultation, we still need to think that through.
Hopefully, in the next meeting coming up in the middle of this month, we would have some detailed discussion. But in my Budget Speech I have made it clear that we need to strengthen co-operation. As long as we have the same objective, that is a smooth transition, then we will be able to draw up a good Budget for Hong Kong in the next year. So it is not a matter of who is to take the lead, that is not our major
concern.
Question (Sing Tao Daily News) (in Cantonese): Now this year the theme is "Building our Prosperous Future" so why don't you allow for a deficit budget? Are you afraid of criticisms from the Chinese side that you are boosting your expenditure substantially? So how would you deal with that?
FS (in Cantonese); I think in my Budget Speech I've made it quite clear why we don't need any measures to stimulate the economy because in our view we don't see the need for that and also at the time we do have stable economic growth. At the same time inflation is going down. So I think for this year we have forecast an economic growth rate of 5%. Now we are in a mature economy, with such a result it is already very good. So if we want to stimulate the economy then it may be too much for us all.
But it has nothing really to do with the Chinese side. I think what is important is that we must look at whether we have a need to do certain measures or as I said there will only be certain circumstances when we will use our reserve. For example. 1995-96, we did dip into our reserve. We look at our trend growth curve for our expenditure. We don't look at the expenditure on the year on year basis. For example. you know we have a trend growth rate of 5% so if expenditure, GDP is above 5% there will be surplus and we would put it to the reserve but if GDP growth is below 5% then we will have a deficit. And that means we will have to dip into the reserves. So that's a prudent way, a sound way of dealing with our public finance. course when there are crises we would have to dip into our reserve.
But of
T
Page 20Page 21