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Following is the transcript (English part) of a stand-up briefing by the Financial Secretary, Mr Donald Tsang, after the 23rd Meeting of the Task Force on Employment today (October 20):

FS : The Employment Task Force just held its 23rd meeting. As you know, with the general improvement in economy, we have seen the unemployment figure continued to decline. The average figures for the months of July, August and September have shown an unemployment rate of 4.8 per cent, which is 0.1 percentage point lower than the previous release for the average figures of June, July and August. The underemployment rate has shown some improvement as well. It has fallen from 2.8 per cent to 2.6 per cent. At the practical level, we have seen that the Labour Department has been able to place, in the month of September, more than 5000 people looking for jobs. At the same time, they have registered vacancies in excess of 16,000. This is at historic high. It also indicates that, although it is a difficult period, because it is a period of summer vacation when a large number of university graduates first entered the employment market, we still have been able to bring the unemployment rate down. It shows that the economy generally is on a steady course of improvement. With this rate of improvement, we are able to see perhaps the first sign of marching towards full employment at some stage later this year or in two years' time. On the whole, we are quite happy with the outcome. A further point we discussed today is that we reviewed the various measures which the Chief Executive announced in his Policy Address. A lot of effort the Chief Executive had put into education would then improve the employment potential of the next generation and also he has given permanent resources for training and retraining. In addition to that, he has embarked on a whole series of programmes which are likely to create 15,000 jobs in the coming financial year. All these means that not only the economy is picking up, other measures being taken by the government hopefully will bring the unemployment rate down to our normal trend rate.

Question: (about full employment)

FS: I think we can realistically expect full employment at some stage. But whether we are able to do it at the end of next year, I think it will be very difficult to say. The unemployment rate is moving downwards at the rate of roughly 0.1 percentage point every month for the last few months. According to this trend, it will take about 20 months or so to bring it down to about three per cent or so. But then it is a matter very much determined by the market and there are also external factors which are entirely out of our control. But generally the recovering force is very clearly seen now and I think we are now seeing the light of the end of the tunnel. But where exactly we would be I can't say at the moment.

(Please also refer to the Chinese transcript)

End/Friday, October 20, 2000

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