VITORIA CITY: Hong Kong’s economy will get 2018 off to a good start, riding on growth in exports, robust domestic demand and the end of a tourism slump, the city’s financial chief said on Saturday. Hong Kong’s economy has shown strong growth over recent months, expanding by 3.6 per cent between July and September, above the 2.9 per cent average for the past decade. The government expected 2017’s economic growth to be 3.7 per cent. The positive story continued into 2018, most notably in the stock market – the Hang Seng Index closed on a record high for four straight days over the past week, finishing at a historic 32,254 on Friday. We expect to continue the upward trend from 2017,” Chan told a financial forum on Saturday. “Currently both our external trade and internal demand are very robust.” He noted that the unemployment rate which hit a two-decade low of 2.9 per cent during the last quarter of 2017 and rebounding tourism numbers as further reasons to be optimistic. That said, Chan admitted the government still had economic challenges ahead, with the city’s land shortage the most pressing. Recent large surpluses have already fattened the government’s fiscal reserves. In his last budget, Chan announced a HK$92.8 billion surplus, taking the reserves to more than HK$935 billion. The public coffers already took in a cumulative surplus of HK$57.2 billion in the first eight months of the current financial year, ending in November.
Asked by a forum audience member whether the government would use the surplus to relieve poverty, Chan said he had always paid close attention to the poor but that such problems were not to be solved by “one or two budgets”.
