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Following is the speech by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Hong Kong Annual Conference 2016 today (May 20):
Mr Andrew Lee (Chairman of the RICS Hong Kong Board), Mr Daniel Shum (Chairman of the Organising Committee of the Hong Kong Annual Conference 2016), distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to kick-start the 2016 Annual Conference of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Hong Kong. This conference focuses on the timely and important topic of the challenges and opportunities associated with Hong Kong's fast ageing society and on how to unlock the huge potential of a growing silver hair market.
Let me first pay warm tribute to RICS HK for bringing together policymakers, cross-disciplinary academics and experts, cross-sectoral social entrepreneurs and professionals to this high-level whole-day event.
A rapidly greying society and an expanding silver hair economy are two sides of the same coin.
Like many developed economies elsewhere, Hong Kong is undergoing a major and significant demographic shift as the current generation of baby boomers starts to retire. Improvements in health and shrinking fertility rates add to our rapidly ageing population. Hong Kong people are also living longer. For our elderly people now aged 65, 60 per cent of them are expected to live to the age of 85 and 40 per cent to over 90. Given longer life expectancy and a persistently low birth rate, our elderly population will continue to grow over the coming 50 years. According to the latest official population projections, our elderly population will more than double from 1.12 million (or 16 per cent) in 2015 to 2.49 million (or 33 per cent) in 2041. In other words, one in three Hong Kong people will be senior citizens in 26 years' time as compared to the current ratio of one in seven. The elderly population aged 75 or above will increase from 0.55 million to 1.51 million over the same period.
No doubt, an ageing population poses challenges to Hong Kong's healthcare, social welfare, elderly care services and housing provision. However, I believe that given proper planning, these challenges are by no means insurmountable. In fact, while Hong Kong must tackle the various challenges arising from a fast ageing population, we can and should capitalise on the enormous opportunities of a greying society in such areas as investment, insurance, travel, leisure, personal and health care and housing, to name just a few. Of course, also involving the application of technology to more comfortable, safe and healthy living for the elderly.
Hong Kong's elderly today and those of the future generations will be healthier and more energetic. They will also be better connected to society, better educated, more independent in planning and taking care of their needs. All these open up new economic and social opportunities not only for this group but also for the community as a whole. This is also where the concepts of active ageing and a silver hair market come in.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government is committed to improving the livelihood of our senior citizens. Recurrent government expenditure for the elderly on social welfare, social security and medical services put together reached a very high $62 billion in 2015-16, representing 19 per cent of total government recurrent expenditure for that year. This reflects the importance that we attach to the well-being of our elderly. With about 60 000 local residents elevated to the rank of senior citizens every year in the next two decades, expenditure in this area is bound to increase substantially. To embrace and tackle the challenges of an ageing Hong Kong, the current-term Government has ranked the task of gearing up for an ageing society and enhancing elderly care and services as one of the key issues on our policy agenda. Our cardinal policy principle in this respect is to promote active ageing and ageing-in-place as the core, institutional care as the backup.
Building Age-friendly Communities
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In response to the World Health Organization (WHO)'s call for more concerted efforts in building age-friendly environments, three of Hong Kong's 18 districts, namely Sai Kung, Kwai Tsing and Tsuen Wan, have become accredited members of the WHO Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities. This means that these three districts have pledged to make their local environment more friendly to our senior citizens in terms of eight indicators, namely outdoor space and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, civic participation and employment, communication and information, as well as community support and health services. To encourage more District Councils (DCs) to participate in the WHO's accreditation scheme, my bureau (the Labour and Welfare Bureau) will work with different DCs and provide additional resources for them to promote the building of age-friendly communities at the district level.
To improve the hardware and software at the community level for use by our senior citizens, the Government has since 2014-15 increased the annual recurrent funding by some $160 million to upgrade our Social Centres for the Elderly to Neighbourhood Elderly Centres and enable all subvented elderly centres to increase their manpower and programme expenses, and strengthen volunteer mobilisation, counselling service and carer support. The Social Welfare Department allocated $900 million from the Lotteries Fund in 2012 to uplift the physical set-up of our elderly centres.
Moving Around and Accessibility
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To encourage our senior citizens and eligible persons with disabilities to participate more in community activities, my bureau has been implementing the Public Transport Fare Concession Scheme for the Elderly and Eligible Persons with Disabilities since June 2012. Under the scheme, senior citizens aged 65 and above can travel on the general Mass Transit Railway lines, franchised buses, ferries and nearly all green minibus routes at a concessionary fare of $2 per trip anytime. This scheme has proved highly popular and effective in promoting active ageing. Specifically, it encourages more elderly to participate more in community activities, visit family members more often, widen their social networks, serve as volunteers and even take up part-time employment. A significant 832 000 passenger trips every day under the scheme are made by elderly people. With the scheme's extension to green minibuses and steady rise in Hong Kong's elderly population, the Government's reimbursement of revenue forgone to the transport operators will rise to around $1.1 billion in the current financial year.
Apart from this transport subsidy scheme, the Government is mindful of the need to ensure barrier-free access not only for people with disabilities but also for our growing elderly population. We should all join hands and strive to remove or reduce all the hurdles hampering their physical movement in society. This task alone would provide considerable opportunities in the silver hair market.
Retraining and Employment
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A key pillar in promoting active ageing is to facilitate and enable those "young old", especially the early retirees, who are willing to work to remain in employment in whatever form. In fact, with Hong Kong's labour force expected to shrink between 2018 and 2035 as a result of a fast ageing population and a falling fertility rate, we need to create an employee-friendly and elderly-friendly employment environment. Both the Employees Retraining Board and the Labour Department are adopting a multi-pronged approach to train, retool and provide employment services for our "young olds" to re-enter the workforce.
Ladies and gentlemen, to enable our senior citizens to age gracefully and to lead a more active, healthy, meaningful and fulfilled life, the Government is committed to making Hong Kong more age-friendly in terms of our hardware, software, city planning and public services.
I firmly believe that the private sector, academia, the welfare sector and social enterprises have major roles to play, along with the Government, in rising to the challenge of effectively meeting the needs our senior citizens. At the same time, we should get our act together in capitalising on the opportunities and unlocking the immense potential of a growing and relatively untapped silver hair market.
On this note, I wish you all a rewarding conference. I look forward to your ideas and wisdom in helping Hong Kong make the best of our irreversible greying trend. Thank you.
Ends/Friday, May 20, 2016
Issued at HKT 15:28
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