Letters | Hong Kong could take leaf out of US’ cost-cutting book

Readers discuss the financial secretary’s efforts to cut costs, and the axing of the HK$2,500 student grant

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Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po holds a press conference at government headquaters on February 26 after delivering the 2025-26 budget speech. Photo: Elson Li

Published: 2:30pm, 20 Mar 2025

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Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po’s latest budget has been criticised for not going far enough to cut costs to deal with the deficit.

The HK$2,500 (US$321) education subsidy will be scrapped. There will be a cap imposed on the number of monthly trips the elderly can take using the HK$2 fare concession scheme. However, civil servants wages were not cut, just frozen.

The financial secretary says that the deficit for the 2024-25 financial year will be HK$87.2 billion. This could well turn out to be an understatement, but it is still not what many are comfortable with.

Our leverage is that we have sizeable fiscal reserves. Furthermore, our foreign exchange reserves are a handsome US$421.5 billion. Experts seem to think we have more than enough to cope with Hong Kong dollar cash outflows.

In the Analects, Confucius says: “Those who do not plan for the future will face immediate trouble.”