TNAG-1362-FCO40-1808-Hong-Kong-Hansard-reports-and-minutes-of-the-meetings-of-the-1985 — Page 94

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the objective has been to seek to reduce the workload of

the Official Receiver's Office, and thereby increase its

productivity, and at the same time to increase revenue.

4.

Firstly, therefore, I propose to encourage the

use of outside liquidators by amending section 196 to

allow the renumeration of an outside liquidator to be

decided either by agreement between the liquidator and the

committee of inspection or by the court, and to allow the

Official Receiver to apply to the court for a review of

the renumeration of the liquidator. At present, section

196 provides only for the court to decide fees.

5.

Secondly, I propose to increase from $10,000 to

$200,000 the limit on the value of the property of a

company in respect of which the Official Receiver may wind

up the company by way of summary procedure under section

227F. The effect of increasing this limit will be to

enable the Official Receiver to use the summary procedure

in a greater number of cases and so reduce the workload of

his office. The limit of $10,000 has not been changed

since the summary procedure was introduced in 1976, and

the White Paper on the Reform of the Insolvency Law

recently published in the United Kingdom recommended that

a similar limit in the British Act be increased to

£15,000. A figure of $200,000 is therefore appropriate

for Hong Kong. The opportunity has also been taken to

simplify the summary procedure.