XN000022-1996-03-07 — Page 8

The Financial Secretary has said just now, yes it is true recently there have been more transactions. But then there are two important points to bear in mind. First of all on land auctioning activities, or rather on speculation activities, so far we do not see any evidence of that. I think most of the transactions really involve end-users. So that is why many in the trade believe that there would be healthy and steady growth in the market; there wouldn't be any surge in prices.

Question (HK Standard): Have you set a ball-park figure on how much all your suggestions would cost Hong Kong? And have you also set the timetable to reach those or at least implement some of them in phases or something? Especially today you said some of the money I mean your medium term forecast has not included the expenditure for MTR and KCR and other major projects. How does that sit in with your plans, you know for improving the sectors I mean the services centre and also the business and everything?

B

FS: You are talking about various proposals I have made in the third part of my Budget Speech. For some of the proposals I have provided funds and I have mentioned them specifically here and there - for language training and so on. And for some others, they are still subject to further consultation with the private sector and the further development of the various action agendas included in the 10th Addendum to the Budget Speech. So it is not possible at this stage to set a timetable for completion of this. Quite clearly it is a priority area from my point of view and we will continue to pursue it. It is no more than a first step, as I mentioned, in my Budget Speech, and it is a product of only a few months work. We have a lot more work to carry out and it is in a priority area.

If I may ask you also not to quantify the benefits of these various action agendas in terms of the money we are going to spend in the coming few years because there will be an enormous multiplying effect involved and there will be contributions by the private sector as well. So it is important for you to look at this thing in a much wider and more liberal context. The agenda is set out for further discussion and I am looking forward for a partnership with the private sector in this

Question (Commercial Radio): If we could just stay with English for a minute Mr Tsang. It seems like this Budget is constructed around certain ideas but perhaps with unintended consequences. You give a lot of benefits to families with two, three, four children which would be quite disadvantageous to individuals or couples who choose not to have children or have only one child. By comparison there is a discrepancy.

The other possibility is that the working poor would be less inclined, and have less incentive to hold a job given what they would earn as working poor versus what they could receive if they simply took CSSA and other benefits coming their way. There's an incentive to become unemployed.