Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Development, Mr Michael Wong, at the question-and-answer session of the media session today (June 28) on the quarterly land sale programme for July to September 2019:
Reporter: Mr Wong, are you concerned that the recent unstable social and political environment may affect the government’s land sale, like maybe more cancel of sale like the one in Kai Tak? And, how confident are you that you can meet the supply target for the whole year?
Secretary for Development: If you look at the site (in Kai Tak of which the tender awarded) this week, the land price is around $18,000 per square foot. Some commentators said it is different from the land price of a previous site we sold a month’s back, that stood at some $19,000 per square foot. But if you take a longer-term view, and you look at a piece of land, also in the same adjacent area, it actually fetched a price of $17,000 per square foot. So our observation is that property prices, especially for residential housing, have stayed quite stable in 2019. So it is not our assessment that the coming residential market will be unduly affected by the social sentiment recently.
Reporter: Are you confident that you can meet the supply target for the whole year?
Secretary for Development: A key element in our supply package is the amount of units to be delivered through private redevelopment. We have always explained that it is an element over which the government does not have that much control. If you look at the figures of this financial year, for the first two quarters, some 1,170 flats have come from this source. That is actually better than the figure of the (first half of the) last financial year, which stood at close to 1,100 flats. If this trend can continue in the third and fourth quarter of this financial year, we are confident that we will be able to meet the target. But of course, there always remains some degree of uncertainties.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, June 28, 2019
Issued at HKT 21:16
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