XN000022-1996-03-06 — Page 19

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Question (Asian Wall Street Journal): A two part question, Sir. One, could you explain, for the lower than expected revenue from land premium, which sites were those and could you sort of run through the numbers on that please?

And then as a second question --

FS: Can I deal with one question at a time. I am afraid I will not be able at this press conference to list out all the sites for you for the coming year. First of all, they comprise a programme for land disposal yet to be agreed by the Land Commission and we must let them agree it first before we can announce the details. But I can assure you we are taking a very broad view of land prices - prevailing land prices - and the value of various sites which we are going to put in the Land Disposal Programme. And then comes a realistic estimate of our total land revenue we are going to obtain in the year to come.

I'm sorry, at this stage I won't be able to give you all the details. You have to wait until we have formally consulted the Land Commission on this matter.

Question (Asian Wall Street Journal): and then a second question on financial services --

$ for Tsy: Sorry, if I may add. It would not be correct to do a year on year comparison of land revenue because by definition, the value of individual sites vary depending on the location, the size, the permitted use, the permitted scale of development and so on. And once a site has been sold, it can't be included in next year's Land Sales Programme so it is not a like for like comparison. That is why we classify land revenue as a capital revenue and for capital revenue you can perhaps look at it on a trend basis but not on a year on year basis.

Question (Asian Wall Street Journal): As a follow up, Sir. You spoke at length about your commitment to promoting financial services. If you were to aggregate that, how much will you be spending, including the Government's spending on the TDC for its new role in promoting financial services?

FS: Well, there are a number of things. I haven't aggregated the whole amount because some of them are revenue measures and some of them are expenditure measures. But if you want to try to do a detailed analysis, I am sure my colleagues will be able to help you do that later on. But as you see, there are some in the form of tax concessions like in the profits tax concession and like special concessions for stockbrokers and so on, and some are in the form of expenditure like my support for the Services Support Fund and for the Tourism Development Fund.