Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Email this article news.gov.hk
STH on Long Term Housing Strategy Annual Progress Report 2015
*********************************************************

     Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, on the Long Term Housing Strategy Annual Progress Report 2015 at a media session this afternoon (December 18):

Reporter: Mr Cheung, can you explain two questions. Firstly, why is there a 10 000 target reduction in HOS flats. Secondly, the FS is injecting $45 billion into the Housing Reserve, but with the lack of land that's at your proposal for public housing, how is that exactly going to help you to, even with all the money, to meet the supply target? Thirdly, do you see that a very difficult challenge in the later five years of the next decade to catch up with the target of meeting the public housing supply, because that's about, it's a little less than 200 000, still a very steep curve for you to match?

Secretary for Transport and Housing: Maybe let me try to take your three questions together. There are three key factors which determine how many units or the level of housing supply that the Government can provide. First of all, and that is a primary factor, the availability of developable land. It's not just the land itself but land that is under our planning requirements, land that could be used for housing development. One of the key challenges faced by the Housing Authority in terms of public housing construction is that over 80 per cent of the land sites are not spade-ready or in Chinese "­ø«Y¼ô¦a". So it takes quite a bit of time, in terms of going through the necessary planning procedures including rezoning procedures in some cases. And also in terms of securing local community support, the reality, or the harsh reality, is that very often we have encountered difficulties in terms of getting local support - support from the District Council and some local stakeholders. Therefore we have to spend more time, we have to have greater patience in order to get the support.

     The second factor is the money side because over the last few years, particularly when we announced the Long Term Housing Strategy, there is some concern as to whether the Housing Authority has enough money resources to support our very ambitious public housing programme. At the moment, the Housing Authority still has a sizable reserve but that reserve will be quickly depleted over the next few years. So if we are going to sustain a very ambitious public housing programme of the scale of about 280 000 units according to the latest estimate, then definitely the Housing Authority will need more financial support from the Government. And the Financial Secretary is very supportive of the public housing construction programme and that is why he has decided to set up this Housing Reserve fund. Last year he has injected $27.5 billion and this time he's adding another $45 billion. So this is a very important move by the Financial Secretary to ensure, to reassure the public, that as far as money is concerned he is entirely backing the Housing Authority.

     The third factor is the construction capacity, whether we have enough labour, whether we have enough capacity to build a large number of units. Historically there was a time when the Housing Authority could build tens of thousands units. So if we have enough construction capacity, we can do so, even if the target that we now set is very ambitious.

     For the HOS (Home Ownership Scheme), because we have scaled down the public housing supply target to 280 000(units), compared to 290 000(units) at the end of last year. So in theory you could adjust the figures for both public rental housing and HOS correspondingly. However, the Government takes the view that given that we have a long waiting list for public rental housing, so we should still keep the present target of 200 000(units) and therefore the number for HOS would be reduced by 10 000(units). But I think because we are doing this adjustment or updating of our supply target annually, so every year, at the of the year, we will revisit the whole situation and decide accordingly.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Friday, December 18, 2015
Issued at HKT 19:41

NNNN

Print this page