XN000022-1997-01-24 — Page 4

2.

"Our housing goals are to help all families gain access to adequate and affordable housing, and to encourage home ownership in the community," Mr. Wong said. "We have achieved a great deal in recent years towards achieving these goals,' he added. "But we still face important challenges in the years ahead."

**

"Despite the enormous resources we commit each year to our public rental housing construction programme, there are still many genuinely needy families waiting for public rental flats. At the same time, there are many families in public rental housing who are less in need of subsidy," he explained.

Mr. Wong said, "We believe that the best and most fair way to help families in genuine need more quickly is to encourage those public housing tenants who can afford to do so to move out, thus releasing flats for re-allocation.

"Another important challenge we face is to help more families to fulfil their wish to own their homes," Mr. Wong said. "We believe that the best and most efficient way to do this is to increase the supply of land for private housing and accelerate production, while continuing to implement and expand our subsidised home ownership schemes."

Mr. Wong highlighted the Government's priorities in tackling these challenges. "We need to concentrate on four key objectives," he said. These are -

to increase flat supply to meet forecast demand, currently estimated to be some 80,000 flats on average each year over the period from 1995 to 2006;

to maximise the contribution of the private sector towards meeting housing demand;

to encourage wider home ownership; and

to provide public rental housing for those in genuine need.

Mr. Wong explained that the Government had put forward a number of possible initiatives to achieve these objectives.

"To increase flat supply, we propose to increase the supply of land and supporting infrastructure (including, where appropriate, by means of entrustment of such works to private developers); to streamline and speed up procedures for the approval of housing projects and related land transactions; and to facilitate the urban renewal process. We will also continue to monitor the capacity of the construction industry and take early measures, as appropriate, to alleviate any specific constraint which may arise." Mr. Wong said.