FS (in Cantonese): Mr Ma, in coming up with this year's Budget what we did with the Chinese authorities is that we show them how we go about working out the Budget. Now, of course, you are aware of the fact that they are worried about welfare expenditure, fearing that there might be adverse consequences. We did listen to their views and we also assessed the views of our public and our people and then you can see the result of our decision and we have increased our spending and that is within our affordability and ultimately our total expenditure is in fact within our trend growth rate and in so doing I think we have persuaded the Chinese authorities that it will not actually have long-term adverse impact.
Question (? organisation) (in Cantonese): A question for Mr Tsang. In talking about the service industry, you have two tax concessions and then you are also saying that in the year 2000 the cost to revenue will only be $135 million. And $135 million actually is very meagre for the whole sector. Will it actually be able to produce its effect?
FS (in Cantonese): Well, our tax is very low. What we need to do is actually to try and give it a push and our service industry is already fairly competitive so you can't really look at the amount and say whether it will be effective or not. If you talk to the people in the sector I'm sure that you will find that it will act as a catalyst.
Question (HK Economic Journal, Lam Kit-yee) (in Cantonese): I would like to talk about economic growth rate. As you have said, this year it is 4.6% and it is lower than anticipated. And then in the medium forecast you did revise it downwards and what are the factors that are beyond your expectation that lead to your having to repeatedly revise the rate, the percentage and why is it 5% next year?
FS (in Cantonese): Well, it's not that we keep revising it downwards but rather we have one trend growth rate, that is 5%. It's for last year, it's for this year, it's for next year. And last year, at the beginning of the year we expected it to be 5.5% and now we are talking about 4.6%. The reasons are very easy. Consumer consumption is slowing down and it is also the economic cycle that is there is a downturn and there are external factors affecting us. But this is not something that is worrying because when we talk about 4.6% in economic growth, it is a pass-mark already. As for next year, because of the external factors, they are improving, the US, Japan, China and the situation is improving and our economic cycle again is on the upward curve and therefore in 1996-97 we feel that we can have a 5% growth rate.
Question (? organisation) (in Cantonese): Now since your economic forecast remains the same, then why is it the public spending as a percentage of GDP growth, why is it it still exceeds 18% and is higher than the medium range forecast made last year?