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 (September 29) on the quarterly land sale programme for October to December 2017:
Reporter: Secretary, you’ve reached your provisional target already for this year, but then we are also seeing that the property prices remain high, so would the Development Bureau keep up its land sale programme, or speed up its land sale programme, or would it come up with other measures to sort of cool the market?
Secretary for Development: As I said, although the target has already been reached, in this (the third) quarter, and in the fourth quarter, we will continue to come up with land for sale, so this is what we will do. For this (the third) quarter, we will be selling sites which are capable of producing 1,090 flats. It’s hard for me to speculate the number of units that we may be able to achieve through land sale in the fourth quarter. It depends on a lot of factors, one of which will be the amount that can come from other sources, including, like I said, the source from private developers’ own initiatives, so there are a lot of uncertainties there. But if you do a calculation, at the end of this (the third) quarter, we will be providing around 20,000 flats at least, and in the fourth quarter, we will continue to come up with land for sale. So we will be going beyond 20,000 flats for sure. How much above that we will go beyond, I don’t want to speculate, so by the fourth quarter, you will know.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, September 29, 2017
Issued at HKT 18:56
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