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Question: Which leaders that you will be meeting?
Chief Secretary: As far as I understand I shall be meeting Mr Li Peng and also Mr Lu Ping. I am not really very clear about the details, as you know I have been away for the last two days.
Question: So you will definitely bring up the human rights issues...?
Chief Secretary: I will be discussing, as I said, a range of transitional issues with Chinese leaders.
End
New measures to boost private residential flat supply
The Secretary for Housing, Mr Dominic Wong, said today (Wednesday) that the Government has considered carefully various suggestions made by developers and the public to increase flat supply in the private sector and has decided to make three adjustments to the conditions of consent for the pre-sale of uncompleted flats.
The adjustments, which will be effective immediately and will apply to new applications for pre-sale consents, are:
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First, the pre-sale period will be extended from the existing 12 months to 15 months before the estimated date of completion of the development.
"We estimate that about 5,000 flats can be put onto the market earlier. This will provide more choices of flats and benefit home buyers. It will also help to improve property developers' liquidity and reduce the finance charges they bear," Mr Wong said.
In 1996, 31 pre-sale consents, involving 13,115 flats were approved. In the first two and a half months of this year, six consents involving about 5,000 flats have already been granted.
"The measure will enable more flats to come on stream earlier," he said.
Second, a new condition will be imposed to require property developers to put all flats for pre-sale onto the market within six months of the date of consent given.