TNAG-1267-FCO40-1616-Economic-situation-in-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 159

profitable to the community, so indicates.

remain conservatively within our guidelines.

it

In the meantime we

In today's world

refreshing to be largely debt free with considerable

fiscal reserves.

15.

The

In my budget speech I again stressed the importance of restraining public sector expenditure and the need to

ensure that the growth rate of public sector expenditure should have regard to the

the growth rate of the

of the economy.

latest estimate

would say intelligent gue88 expenditure on the Consolidated Account, based on performance over the first five months, is $41.2 billion, representing a decrease of $1.3 billion over the budget estimate.

16.

-

Боле

of

As a general rule the growth rate of public sector expenditure over a period should not outrun the growth rate of the economy, So that the Government does not pre-empt resources that would otherwise be used more effectively by the private sector for export purposes. Thus the growth rate of public sector expenditure and the relative size of the public

sector inust and will continue to be closely monitored. This will involve difficult and indeed disputatious selection of

programme priorities; but I emphasise that the control 15 on

growth. There nave not been cutbackB in public spending.

message nas not yet

not yet fully been

fully been taken. At present there

18 an outstanding commitment, I repeat commitment, of about $24.5 billion 10 respect of public works projects in hand.

This represents a nuge forthcoming investment in social and economic infrastructure and illustrates the Government's firm

intention of investing vigorously for the future.

This

17.

Turning now to my GDP forecast, the performance of the economy in the first half of this year and

year and the generally prospects of Hong Kong's major trading

improving economic

partners

indicate that my

cautious

budget

forecast of

7

expenditure