Cash handouts for Hongkongers unlikely, finance chief says ahead of annual budget announcement
City favours ‘more targeted measures’ than the support issued by Macau government, which said residents would each receive HK$8,700 this year
Hongkongers hoping to receive cash handouts from the government this year may be disappointed, as the city’s finance chief expressed reservations about using the huge surplus to dish out sweeteners.
Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po, who is due to deliver his annual budget on February 28, said the government preferred more targeted relief measures.
“The government does not entirely agree with ways that do not target any specific group, like what has been done in Macau. There are a lot of people in the community who also disagree with such methods, so the government would tend to prefer more targeted measures,” Chan said on a Commercial Radio programme on Saturday.
The Macau government has been giving out one-off cash handouts to its residents for 11 years in a row since 2008. The city’s chief executive Fernando Chui Sai-on announced in November that each permanent resident would receive 9,000 patacas (HK$8,700/US$1,100) this year.
In Hong Kong, former finance chief John Tsang Chun-wah dished out a one-time cash sweetener of HK$6,000 for each resident in the 2011-12 financial year.
This comes as Hong Kong is set to reap a massive surplus of close to HK$160 billion this year, much larger than the original estimate of HK$16.3 billion for 2017-18, according to figures earlier obtained by the Post.
