11 July 2005

Mr Honourable Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, GBM
Chief Executive
Office of the Chief Executive
5/F., Central Government Offices
Main Wing, Lower Albert Road
Hong Kong

Sharing ideas for your maiden policy

You must be in process of preparing your maiden Policy Address slated for delivery in October this year. In this connection, I would like to share with you my thoughts on the following items:

Commencing more infrastructure projects and building works to create more employment

Although the overall employment rate is improving, the unemployment rate of the construction sector is still very high at 15%. The problem affects more than 1 million people if the family members of the practitioners in the sector are included. It is an important public issue, not just an issue of one particular sector.

It is imperative for the government to dish out more infrastructure projects and building works while at the same time expediting the implementation of the approved projects. The 169 projects of the two defunct municipal councils have to be resumed without delay. In addition, the government should make available adequate recurrent expenditure to government departments to enable them to commence new projects.

Meanwhile, the government should consider adopting the Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) to encourage private companies to initiate with private funding more new public projects, which have not been included in the existing infrastructure programme or may not be built by the government on its own in the foreseeable future. For financing more new infrastructure and buildings works, the government can make further issues of bonds. However, the fund so obtained must not be used for resolving the budget deficit as the case of last year.

For meeting the requirements of the growing passenger and vehicular traffic volumes between Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Region, the government should expedite the construction of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. For this project, the government must spare no efforts in winning more design and construction contracts for Hong Kong companies. The government should also expedite the study in other cross-boundary links such as the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and Sha Tau Kok Link for their early implementation.

To help Hong Kong companies tap into the Mainland market, your good self, as suggested by me on a number of occasions, could lead high-profile Hong Kong delegations to the Mainland cities with a view to assisting Hong Kong companies in winning construction and engineering contracts in major projects such as the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the 2012 Asian Games in Guangzhou.

Enhancing professionalism of civil service to meet new challenges

To inject more professional expertise into the upper echelon of the Administration, the government should consider providing a proper dovetail for senior professional officers including engineers to join the Administrative Officer Grade without going through open recruitment for lower ranks.

With the improvement in the fiscal deficit problem, it is high time for the government to resume recruiting professional staff like engineers on permanent terms to meet the requirements for our future development and to prevent the succession problem. Besides, the recruitment would allow qualified young engineers to pursue their professional career in the government as their senior counterparts did in the past.

Deepening the Mainland and Hong Kong CEPA to extend the benefits to the engineering sector

There is still much room for refining and improving the detailed requirements of CEPA if the engineering sector is to enjoy its benefits. The slow progress in concluding the mutual recognition of professional qualifications between the Mainland and Hong Kong is disappointing. The obstacles posing to Hong Kong engineers intending to start practice in the Mainland and the high requirement thresholds deterring the entry of the engineering contractors and engineering consultancy firms into the Mainland are two other areas that call for the urgent attention of the government.

Turning Hong Kong into a hub of higher education

The government should consider increasing the intake of full time non-local students to our tertiary institutions. The arrangement could internationalise our student population and bring extra tuition fee income to our universities because those students from outside Hong Kong would have to pay higher tuition fees. The quota for students from outside Hong Kong in our universities should be aggressively revised upward as long as the arrangement will cause no adverse impact on the learning opportunities of local students.

I sincerely hope that you will give serious consideration to the above suggestions, as they are most relevant to the challenges that Hong Kong is facing.

Ir Dr the Hon Raymond HO Chung-tai