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Carrie Lam vows to boost social policy spending; tighten controls over financial secretary
The chief executive hopeful said the Basic Law does not prohibit an annual fiscal deficit
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The front runner in Hong Kong’s leadership race, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, has refused to commit to maintaining the government’s annual budget surplus, defying her arch-rival’s long-standing fiscal conservatism in a bid to push for her ambitious social policies.
At the start of the two-week nomination period yesterday, Lam took aim at John Tsang Chun-wah’s former powers as financial secretary, vowing to keep a tight rein on the post if elected. She even threatened to fire her future finance minister in case of disobedience.
Tsang, the popular underdog in the race, did not respond to Lam’s take on public finances, but said he was confident he would eventually win more votes under a secret ballot in the March election than initial nominations.
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Lam, who announced on Monday she would spend an extra HK$5 billion a year on education and cut taxes for the first HK$2 million profit for all companies, questioned the approach to maintain budgetary surpluses when the financial reserves were standing at nearly HK$917 billion.
“While I will uphold a prudent approach to public finance, there is nowhere in the Basic Law that says there cannot be fiscal deficits,” Lam said, stressing the mini-constitution’s wording was that the government should “strive to” avoid such a situation.
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On a radio show, she went into detail on what she thought had gone wrong in the relationship between the chief executive and the financial secretary.
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