Burden on public finance
MR CHAN CHUN-YING (in Cantonese): President, as Secretary HUI mentioned in the main reply earlier, government bureaux and departments will draw up the most suitable financial proposal for the project having regard to a series of factors and while Lantau Tomorrow is awaiting the results of the consultancy study, does the Government have a set of clear criteria or guidelines internally for making decisions on the financing arrangements for works projects, especially these mega-scale works projects?
SECRETARY FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES AND THE TREASURY (in Cantonese): President, as I said in the main reply earlier on, we made arrangements in the past having regard to the respective circumstances, and depending on the nature of the project concerned, consideration was made in order to come up with a set of suitable arrangements to cater to the demands for development accordingly. Regarding the supplementary questions raised by Mr LAM and Mr CHAN earlier, I believe there is a very clear message behind them and that is, we do not only ask for government funding but we also have to think about how we can better deploy social resources, such as whether the Public-Private Partnership approach should be adopted or other social capitals or the capitals of the economic market should be leveraged for the development of this project.
In fact, we are absolutely keeping an open mind, and as I explained earlier, I personally reckon that the entire project may be taken forward in a way similar to the cocktail therapy in that a mixture of different approaches will be adopted because this project is of a certain scale and comprised of different elements at the same time. So, in response to Mr CHAN’s supplementary question, basically we will have regard to the respective circumstances and we also need to take into account the nature of the projects and draw reference to the successful experiences in the past in identifying a suitable approach.