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Following is the transcript of the media session given by the Financial Secretary, Mr Antony Leung, on new employment initiatives at the conference hall of the Central Government Offices (New Annex) this afternoon (June 15):
Question: How far is this going to help alleviate pressure on the unemployment rate? And what do you expect the rate will be in the next six months? There are predictions that it would go over eight per cent.
Financial Secretary: As the government has announced last time, we believed that SARS has really caused a lot of pressure on the unemployment side. And the number that we announced last month did not fully reflect the situation. And we had fore-warned that the unemployment number would continue to go up, at least in the foreseeable future. The government is aware that the SARS situation has aggravated the unemployment situation, that is why the government is coming up with all these short-term training and employment opportunities in such a timely manner and in such scale. As I said it would impose some pressure on the fiscal side, but we believe that the money involved is necessary and is a deserving sum to spend.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
End/Sunday, June 15, 2003
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