Hong Kong must maintain cash reserves to cope with geopolitical shocks and support long-term growth, even with a surplus expected in the government\u2019s operating account this year, the financial secretary has said.<\/p>\n
Paul Chan Mo-po also said on Saturday that the city\u2019s economy outperformed forecasts last year, lifted by strong exports to Southeast Asia and a booming financial market.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the government announced a surplus of HK$43.9 billion (US$5.6 billion) in its operating account, which manages the daily public expenditure, for the nine months ended December 31.<\/p>\n
But it cautioned that revenue would taper off after January, with expenditure significantly exceeding income from February to March.<\/p>\n
While expressing understanding of different residents\u2019 wishes for more financial incentives, Chan, who will deliver his budget speech in February, said authorities must manage their accounts cautiously.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should balance our current needs and middle- to long-term development, such as infrastructure construction in the Northern Metropolis,\u201d he told a radio show, referring to the government megaproject to turn 30,000 hectares (74,132 acres) of land bordering mainland China into a technology and residential hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong must maintain cash reserves to cope with geopolitical shocks and support long-term growth, even with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,17580,114,113,132623,133688,40167,240,61,60,22471,18273,17759,33988,2737],"class_list":{"0":"post-274214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-census-and-statistics-department","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-february","13":"tag-finance-secretary-paul-chan-mo-po","14":"tag-financial-market","15":"tag-hong-kong","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-mainland-china","19":"tag-northern-metropolis","20":"tag-southeast-asia","21":"tag-the-united-states","22":"tag-trade-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}