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Following is the transcript (English portion) of remarks by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, at the press conference on housing initiatives in the Chief Executive's Policy Address today (October 13) :
Reporter: Miss Cheng, can you explain the rationale behind using this rent-and-buy scheme instead of other traditional schemes that the government actually has, say, the rebuilding of HOS flats. And secondly, this is only a scheme with 5,000 units, ...... the first batch with only about a thousand and won't come until 2014. Is this more a water testing scheme? Can it actually solve the existing problems of the community?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: I think we need to reemphasise again to solve the "problem" of high property prices is not via any kind of subsidised home purchase scheme. I think the CE has made it very clear that the ultimate solution lies in supply. And he has already committed through a committee that will be chaired by the Financial Secretary to look at steady land supply in the order of 20,000 units a year, taking into account the take up rate in the past 10 years. That's why such kind of subsidised scheme would offer an effective buffer when we face a volatile housing market. I think we need to remind ourselves that it is quite important that housing as other economic activities, they do have their cycles.
Your other question was the rationale. I think we need to respond to what we have heard during the consultation stage. A lot of Hong Kong people are telling us in fact they do have the ability to service their mortgage in the long term. The problem is, when they face the volatile housing market with rising prices, over the down payment. As the consensus of the community is that we should not lend them the money in order to pay the down payment because we have seen the problems with the housing loan schemes, so how do we solve the down payment issue without lending them more money? We need to take that into account.
The second quite clear response we have heard is that, they would like to have a longer period of stability to help them to save up. And in fact Hong Kong people are telling us that most of the time they want to be self-reliant. This is a very strong Hong Kong spirit. So this scheme that we are devising together with the Housing Society enables them to have a five plus two, that is, the longest period of seven years to think about it and to save up enough for the down payment. So that in servicing the mortgage, they will have a slightly easier time in the subsequent years.
The other view that we must respond to - we feel that it was a very strong view made to us that the government must not seen to be coercing or forcing people to buy flats. That's why we give them sufficient time to think about it. It is also in response to people what they are telling us during the consultation period. Especially when we pushed out other subsidised housing schemes in 1996 and 1997. There have been a lot of rather difficult cases and people still reminding us that we must not repeat those examples. So that's why in putting together a scheme, we have had to take into account all the limitations that I have just described.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Issued at HKT 20:45
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