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Reporter: One question, two points if I may. As you have heard from some of the other questions, it does seem this package to be a little bit more old wine in more old bottles, so I am wondering what you hope the cumulative effect of these measures will be, and secondly, are you holding back a little bit on what you could have done because you are still uncertain about the effects of swine flu and the global turndown.
Financial Secretary: Old measures are not necessarily ineffective measures. I think these are very effective measures and I think they will serve their purpose. Altogether it's not a small package - it's $16.8 billion and that in fact would contribute about half a percentage point to the improvement of this year's GDP. So together with the measures that we put out earlier this year, with the measures all together would improve our GDP figure by about 2%. So it's 1.5 with the previous measures that we have implemented and then another about half a percentage point, and all together would be 2%, and 2% improvement in GDP is not bad at all.
Reporter: Are you holding back a little bit still because of the uncertainty ...
Financial Secretary: I'm not holding back anything, and I think this $16.8 billion will serve the purpose for the rest of the year. Obviously if the economic situation around the world should deteriorate for some reason, or if the swine flu should change, mutate, in such a way that would affect the demand potential in a lot of the Western countries that would affect ultimately the logistics sector, the trading sector, the transport sector in Hong Kong, I do not deny any possibility that we might need to do something further. But this is something for us to consider in the future. I am optimistic at this point that the second half of this year will be better than the first half and for the year as a whole, the average reduction in our GDP will be better than what we did in our first quarter.
Ends/Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:44
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