************************************************************
Following is the transcript of the meet-the-media session (English portion) by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, on the public consultation exercise on subsidising home ownership today (June 1):
Reporter: How can you get any concrete results when your framework does not give any concrete proposals?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: We have in the consultation framework for discussion put out three very specific issues or questions that we would like to invite the public to give views. First, it's the policy objective of subsidising home ownership. I think this morning at the Housing Authority's brainstorming session, members also emphasised the importance of getting the positioning right. I think, the reasoning and the policy objective, we need to sort that out. We need to seek public views and support on this.
The second question we ask is that which group should we target the facilitation and help. Should the starting point be what we have now, the White Form applicants or other definitions? That's very important because we need to target the assistance at this specific group.
The third issue that we need to consider and we have to point out very clearly in the consultation framework is the method of doing so. The method needs to be sustainable and as members have reminded us today, the economic cycle has considerably shortened because of a lot of uncertainties in the world economies. We've seen the US and Europe, the situation there. And that would lead to a lot of fluctuations, a lot of volatility in our housing market, so it's important that in the end, if we go for a certain measure or method, it needs to be sustainable, and it's not just anti-cycle, because no government effort would be able to make a U-turn on certain economic cycles which are based on things like interest rates, which are probably out of our hands. So I think it's important that we get public views and we have specifically asked for response in these three areas.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Issued at HKT 16:43
NNNN
