Hong Kong government set to miss its land release target for fiscal year
Figures suggest that government will have met 60pc of its target by the end of the year
The government is set to miss its land release target for the fiscal year that aims to provide 13,600 flats throughout Hong Kong.
Eight residential and one commercial site will be released in the October-December quarter, enabling the construction of 3,300 flats, development secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said yesterday.
For the first three quarters as a whole, sufficient land will have been released on which to build only 8,200 flats, which is only 60 per cent of the government's target for the whole fiscal year. However, Chan was upbeat following the release of the latest Lands Department figures.
"We are relatively optimistic on meeting our target," he said. "There are 22 sites out of the 46 sites in the land sales programme for this financial year which need to get approval for rezoning. We are working on it. It takes time to complete town planning procedures. We expect there will be more sites available for release in the last quarter [from January to March next year]," he said.
The government has a separate target of 20,000 flats including railway projects.
Buggle Lau Ka-fai, chief analyst at Midland Realty, said he was not optimistic the government would release enough land to build 20,000 flats by March.
