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Following is a question by the Hon Cheung Hok-ming and a written reply by the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Professor K C Chan, in the Legislative Council today (April 6):
Question:
Regarding the provision of government subventions to statutory bodies, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the number of statutory bodies receiving annual subventions from the Government at present, together with a list of the names of the statutory bodies concerned and the respective amounts of subventions received by individual statutory bodies in each of the past three years; and
(b) whether an established mechanism is in place for determining and adjusting the amount of annual subventions that may be received by these statutory bodies; if so, of the details; if not, the criteria based on which the authorities determine the amount of annual subventions for statutory bodies and how the amounts are adjusted?
Reply:
President,
(a) According to records, the Government now provides recurrent subventions to 62 statutory bodies. The total amount of subventions for the past three years is $154.147 billion. Please refer to the Annex for details.
(b) Government departments take into account the statutory bodies' objectives, past performance and service requirements in the coming year in adjusting the subventions to statutory bodies. In addition, it has been the established practice that, if the subventions to the organisations are price-adjusted on the basis of formulae including a factor of civil service pay adjustment, the Government will adjust the provisions for these organisations following a civil service annual pay adjustment.
Ends/Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Issued at HKT 12:01
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