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Reporter: Firstly in terms of the initiatives, would they all be too little too late given that you mentioned that your maintaining employment is key, but ironically some members of the task force itself actually have been cutting jobs so are these measures too little too late? And secondly perhaps...
Chief Executive: One question at a time.
Reporter: But there have been a lot of calls about the ineffectiveness of government...
Chief Executive: Can I take one question at a time. First of all, our unemployment situation at the present moment is 3.5%, it¡¦s almost close to full employment. What we are dealing with is a problem we anticipate will happen next year. So it¡¦s not a question of too late, it¡¦s a question of whether we are doing it in time. And I believe the measures we are taking are going to address, at least reduce, the rising unemployment pressure that we¡¦re going to face in 2009. And the question of measures being too little. Well, we have to look at these objectively. We have been facing this problem in the last two months in particular when our output, particularly our exports, have been falling, particularly during the months of September and October and November. And the measures we have been taking so far, if you catalogue them, were quite an impressive list. Set against the Hong Kong fundamentals being good, we are not talking about collapsing financial industry. Our financial industry, unlike elsewhere, is quite robust. We are talking about how we will deal with a global slowdown, and the measures we have been taking are measured, good ones, but they are practical ones, effective ones, and this is not the end of the exercise. Next year of course there will be a Budget which the Financial Secretary is going to announce and will cope with, and deal with, the sort of measures, same problems that we are facing now: unemployment and slow growth. And I believe there will be a concerted effort, not only by us, but also by the private sector. We're going to produce a much better setting and much better conditions in dealing with crises of this kind than we did in 1998 and the year 2000.
Reporter: Could you give us any more information about the three measures you said the Mainland, or Beijing, would be helping with, particularly expanding the renminbi business? Do you have any more information on that at the moment and the other projects helping Hong Kong-funded businesses in the PRD?
Chief Executive: There is a whole host of issues we can expand later on. There will be follow-up sessions given by my colleagues on this. We must remember that most of the measures we are proposing to the mainland authorities, the decision rests with the mainland authorities. But they are geared to helping, particularly our enterprises in the Pearl River Delta. They are geared to, for instance, various measures dealing with taxation, dealing with environmental protection, particularly with the liquidity problem, particularly with the renminbi, the lending facilities. In fact, some of the measures have been implemented, some will become more apparent as we see in the next few months. On the expansion of renminbi business in Hong Kong, this has been a large issue as ongoing discussions, I hope we are to bring some of these to fruition when I do my annual reporting to Beijing later in the month.
Ends/Monday, December 8, 2008
Issued at HKT 19:37
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