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Following is the transcript (English portion) of the media session given by the Financial Secretary, Mr Antony Leung, at the Central Government Offices, Main Wing today (June 24):

Financial Secretary: I am very happy that I can serve as Financial Secretary under the new accountability system. I look forward to working with the principal officials as well as the permanent secretaries to serve the Hong Kong community. All the principal officials are extremely capable in their own right as well as very good team members.

The permanent secretaries that I have worked with over the last one year and I must say truely have given me extremely good support....and I am sure that they will extend their support to the officials and myself. And I am certain that the new team, meaning the principal officials and the permanent secretaries together, will serve the Hong Kong community well.

The economy is now facing a lot of challenges. I am confident that working with the principal officials and permanent secretaries will improve the business environment as well as provide an environment to our citizens. I am also committed to meeting the three targets set out in the Budget Speech, that is, balancing the budget, as well as reducing the public sector expenditure to below twenty per cent of the GDP. So now I welcome questions.

Reporter: .....And the other thing is how can the public expect from the new line-up as far as the employment and the economy .....?

Financial Secretary: Having worked in the business sector as well as in the public sector for almost thirty years now, and having actually studied in Universities in Hong Kong, a lot of people are really my friends. So it is actually not important whether so and so is my friend or not my friend. We have discussed with the Chief Executive possible names that he can kind of recruit. And the Chief Executive has said in the press conference earlier on that he actually had met a lot of people, actually a lot more people than you have reported. And the team that is selected is the most appropriate one. It is capable, and is capable of working as a team. And this is the most important thing.

As far as the economic direction of Hong Kong is concerned, I believe I made remarks earlier on and so I won't repeat them here.

Reporter: Talk about improving investment policies and how you with this new team are you going to get together with them to, maybe to revise the economic policy or target a little bit?

Financial Secretary: Obviously we are going to work as a team. The three secretaries that are principally in charge of the economy will be working very closely to make sure that the policies that we promulgate to improve the business environment, to improve the employment situation would be most appropriate. As I said I think they are all believers of free market. And most of the directions that we are pursuing are correct ones. Obviously, if they can refine the policy, if they can implement it a lot better, it would be to the benefit of Hong Kong. We will be working very closely with them. However, the economic portfolio is actually not just the three secretaries that we commonly look at. There are a lot of other issues including the security of Hong Kong, including the human resources, investment in Hong Kong. These are also very important policies that would affect the Hong Kong economy. And I will continue to work with all these other secretaries to ensure that the Hong Kong economy will improve as well as improve the employment situation in Hong Kong.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

End/Monday, June 24, 2002

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