XN000022-1995-03-08 — Page 3

2

-

Mrs Chan: This has been a long but important debate on a very complex subject, that is, how to provide for retirement protection for the elderly in our community. We very much welcome the decisive votes in favour of a mandatory privately operated retirement protection system. With the clear support from Legislative Councillors this afternoon, the Government will now proceed speedily to set up a task force in order to examine further the details of We will be a proposed mandatory privately operated retirement system. engaging consultants and will require the consultants to submit preliminary report by the end of April. It would be our aim to try and set up this scheme as soon as possible and with this objective in mind, we would also hope to be in a position to put primary legislation before the Legislative Council before the end of the current legislative session. As to the details, I think that the main features of such a scheme have already been outlined by the Secretary for Education and Manpower, so I won't elaborate on those further. There will clearly be further details and in particular we'll need to address the concerns that have been expressed by individual members during the debate this afternoon. All these concerns will be taken on board and we will be consulting with the consultants and also with the insurance industry.

Question: Can you tell us when do you plan to consult China ?

Mrs Chan: We will be notifying the Chinese side after this afternoon's motion debate. We hope to be able to discuss the proposed scheme with the main features as outlined in this afternoon's debate with the Chinese side as soon as possible, because clearly we will need Chinese support if the scheme is to get off the ground as soon as possible.

Question: Will submitting the legislation to LegCo be subject to Chinese approval?

Mrs Chan: I would very much hope that as a basis of our discussion with the Chinese that there will be sufficient support from the Chinese for draft legislation to be put before the Legislative Council. I think the Chinese side much be equally concerned as the Hong Kong Administration about the growing number of elderly people in our community and would wish to see a sensible, practical and pragmatic scheme set up as soon as possible to address the financial security needs of growing number of elderly people in our community.

End/Wednesday, March 8, 1995