Transcript of remarks by SDEV at media session (English only)
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Reporter: Secretary, the government plans to provide more than 3,000 hectares of "spade-ready sites" in 10 years. Are you confident that it can be enough to meet the demand and is there any KPI (key performance indicator) to assess the progress?
Secretary for Development: First of all, I think our release of the 10-year forecast of these "spade-ready sites" is already a KPI in itself because it's a very solemn release of a forecast and the government team will try our best to really proceed with the conclusion of the relevant studies and get the land formed in time. And of course if individual parcels cannot be formed in time since we are going to release the forecast on an annual basis, we will have to account for any particular delay in individual projects, so no doubt about it, that is already in itself a KPI.
Reporter: And you mentioned that the government doesn't rule out the possibility to develop country parks for more lands, so how to strike a balance between development and conserving these green belts or country parks?
Secretary for Development: First of all, at this very moment, we are still focusing on the delivery of the more than 200 hectares of green belt parcels we have identified. As the next step, we will have to start detailed technical studies in today's 200-odd hectares already identified and get the planning process started in about two years' time. So that is quite a lot of hard work in front of us but as we have said before, we have never ruled out the study of individual land parcels at the fringe of country parks. And I want to make it very clear here, we are not talking about the development of the entire country parks of a full-blown review of all the country parks' land in Hong Kong, we are just talking about the possibility of looking into individual land parcels, probably at the fringe of certain country park areas. And we will do that at an appropriate time but meanwhile we need to focus on rolling out and commencing the detailed studies on the green belt parcels we have identified.
Ends/Sunday, October 23, 2022
Issued at HKT 12:24
Issued at HKT 12:24
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