IMPROVE LIVELIHOOD

In order to improve livelihood of the needy and the disadvantaged, Tsang announced five measures involving 20 billion HK dollars (2.58 billion U.S. dollars), together with other measures in this budget, the fiscal stimulus effect on GDP will be 0.7 percentage point.

These measures include reducing salary tax and tax under personal assessment for 2013-14 by 75 percent, reducing profit tax for 2013-14 by 75 percent, waiving rates for the first two quarters of 2014-15 that subject to a ceiling of 1,500 HK dollars per quarter for each rateable property, and paying one month's rent for public housing tenants.

In addition to one-off measures, Tsang also proposed recurrent measures to increase the allowances for maintaining dependent parents or grandparents to alleviate taxpaying providers' burden. About 550,000 taxpayers will be benefited and that will cost the government about 300 million HK dollars a year.

The financial chief also addressed the housing problem, reiterating the plan to supply 470,000 residential flats in the coming 10 years.

Tsang told lawmakers that to address the demand for land in the short, medium and long term, the government plans to increase housing land supply with a view to achieving the target of providing 470,000 residential flats in the coming 10 years.

"So far we have identified 150 sites for residential use which, if their statutory plans could all be successfully amended, are expected to be made available over the next five years to provide about 210,000 public and private units," Tsang said.

According to the financial chief, public housing takes up 60 percent of the new housing target. The government will ensure that the Housing Authority will have an estimated balance of 68 billion HK dollars at the end of this financial year, "the sum can meet the funding requirement of the development program for the next four years."(1 U.S. dollar equals to about 7.76 HK dollars)