XN000022-1996-08-09 — Page 9

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Majority confident of HK's continuous prosperity: HAB poll

A public opinion survey conducted in July by the Home Affairs Branch (HAB) has shown that 61 per cent of the respondents are confident that Hong Kong will continue to be prosperous and stable.

The figure represented an increase of six percentage points from 55 per cent in May, an HAB spokesman said today (Friday) when releasing the latest findings of the bimonthly survey.

There was also a slight improvement in the general positive perception of the present situation with 72 per cent of the respondents expressing satisfaction, up from 70 per cent.

On the future, 45 per cent of the respondents expected the situation to stay about the same in the next 12 months, representing an increase of one percentage point, and 14 per cent believed it would improve, up by three percentage points.

As for the performance of the Government, the civil service impressed 47 per cent of the respondents as an efficient force, a rise from 45 per cent recorded in the last

survey.

Of the three most often mentioned problems facing the territory, housing issues had replaced labour problems to top the list with 34 per cent, which represented an increase of two percentage points.

Among this group of respondents, 42 per cent were worried about the price of private housing of being too high. The corresponding figure in the last survey was 36 per cent.

The percentage of respondents concerned about labour-related problems continued to drop from 35 per cent to 32 per cent while Hong Kong's future, at 27 per cent, was the third most often mentioned issue, compared with 26 per cent previously.

The survey was the 65th in the series to gauge the trend of public opinion on perceived problems in Hong Kong, Government's overall performance and the community's views of the general situation.

Through a random sampling of residential telephone numbers, 1,526 persons aged between 15 and 64 were surveyed.

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