XN000022-1997-03-12 — Page 33

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Mr K C Kwong: I suggest that you look at Table 3 on page 7 of Appendix A to the yellow pages (of the Budget Speech).

Reporter (in English): Well, thank you very much.

Mr Mike Rowse (in English): Unfortunately, I can't point to a table to give you all the answers. I can invite you to a dedicated press conference on Monday afternoon when you will be able to ask questions about the proposed new unit, to your hearts content. In very simple terms, we are hoping to set up the unit in April and we will have two broad streams of work. One is on promotion of services, and I think you have probably got the Budget folder and you have got in there the final report of the government task force on promotion of services. I have a copy here. If you haven't got one I can arrange to let you have one. It sets out some pretty impressive progress over the last year and what we really want to do now is pick up the ball and run with it. I have been on the phone today and yesterday to the people we are inviting on to the strategy group that will meet in April for the first time. The people concerned are very enthusiastic - I was talking to Victor Fung this morning they are very excited and they want to sit down with the government and consider the way forward on development of service industries.

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The second broad stream of work is to help in business programme. That has been going for a year under the Secretary for the Treasury, supported by the Efficiency Unit, but it is now poised to take-off very, very rapidly which is why we are proposing to have a dedicated unit to take it forward into phase two, and I think for details you will have to wait until Monday.

Reporter (in Chinese): Mr Tsang, in your Budget you mentioned that next year, for private housing, there will be 21,000 units and earlier on there was an estimate that in the private sector there will be 30,000, and so there is a gap between the two. So does it mean that looking at the figures the demand will still lag behind the buyers and the pressure on property prices will continue to rise?

Mr Donald Tsang (in Chinese): Concerning supply, indeed the situation is still tight and in the coming few years we will be concentrating our efforts in this particular field and that is the reason why, and we hope that we can increase private sector housing production. But the government alone cannot increase the production single-handedly because half of the production comes from the change of density in order for more units to be built, and so we really have to see whether we can rationalise the procedures so that the private sector can be assisted in redevelopment.

Reporter (in Chinese): Can you relax the pre-sale restriction from one year to two years, so that the production will be increased.