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Following is transcript of a media session given by the Financial Secretary, Mr Antony Leung after his tour of City University and DCDC today (July 12)(English portion):
Reporter: The Government expected to save $6 billion in the budget from the pay cut, but as it turned out it would only save about $3 billion. So does that mean the pay cut isn't going to alleviate the budget deficit? What sort of measures would you take to .... (inaudible)
Mr Leung: Firstly, we are committed to the three targets that I set out for 2006-2007 and that is to achieve a budget balance in both the consolidated account and the operating account by 2006-07.
Secondly, we will achieve or we will reduce the size of the public sector expenditure down to 20 per cent of the GDP or below. These are our targets and we are committed to achieve it. Now that the civil service pay adjustment, the bill has been passed, we are finding ways to make up the shortfall. The most powerful instrument obviously is to see how we can contain the growth of public expenditure even further. But now we are containing growth of public expenditure, I'm quite sure that we can still render good service to the community. After all, we are using quite a large chunk of the economy, that is we are spending 23 per cent of the GDP in terms of public sector expenditure. Through re-deployment, through more effective use of that resource, through re-engineering the organisation and the re-prioritistion, I'm quite sure we can achieve our targets while still rendering good service to the community.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
End/Friday, July 12, 2002
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