Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan Mo-po has announced the city will remove all restrictions on property transactions as part of his solutions to the city’s sluggish economy and shrinking fiscal reserves in what some analysts are calling the most difficult budget blueprint ever.
Themed “Advance with Confidence. Seize Opportunities. Strive for High-quality Development”, the budget blueprint being unveiled on Wednesday morning includes a series of measures to spur growth.
All of the decade-old cooling measures aimed at curbing speculation have been scrapped with immediate effect in a bid to revive Hong Kong’s depressed property market, with lived-in home prices falling for the ninth straight month in January to a level last seen in 2016.
The financial secretary has pledged to take a more targeted approach to spending this year and ditch consumption vouchers for residents as the city’s deficit is set to balloon to more than HK$100 billion, potentially leaving Hong Kong’s fiscal reserves at their lowest in a decade.
Reporting by Jeffie Lam, Denise Tsang, Lo Hoi-ying, Sammy Heung, Elizabeth Cheung, Lilian Cheng, Natalie Wong, Oscar Liu, Connor Mycroft, Jess Ma and Harvey Kong
