Author Archives: hksar gov

     The Chief Secretary for Administration and Chairman of the Anti-epidemic Fund Steering Committee, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, today (April 16) said that following the Legislative Council Finance Committee’s approval of the $30-billion funding application for the first round Anti-epidemic Fund, the 24 measures under the Fund had been rolled out progressively. Over $8 billion has already been disbursed under the Fund. Good progress has been made and many businesses and members of the public are gradually receiving subsidies.  
 
    The application period for the Retail Sector Subsidy Scheme launched under the Fund ended on April 12. About 93 000 applications from retailers were received, and about $800 million in subsidies have been approved. Depending on the vetting progress of applications, it is expected that the disbursement of subsidies could be largely completed by end April.
 
     The Chief Executive announced on April 8 a series of measures to help businesses stay afloat, keep workers in employment, relieve financial burdens of individuals and businesses and assist the economy to recover once the epidemic is contained. To implement the relevant measures, the Government will seek the Legislative Council Finance Committee’s funding approval of $137.5 billion tomorrow (April 17). The funding includes an injection of $120.5 billion to the Fund to roll out the second round of measures to provide further assistance or relief to members of the public and enterprises hard hit by the current epidemic or affected by anti-epidemic measures.
 
     “I earnestly hope that Legislative Council Members would support and approve this significant funding application at the Finance Committee meeting tomorrow so that the relevant measures could be implemented as soon as possible to address the pressing needs of the community promptly,” Mr Cheung said. read more

     Hong Kong Customs yesterday (April 15) detected two sea-bound smuggling cases in a row at the Kwai Chung Customhouse Cargo Examination Compound and seized about 17 tonnes of suspected smuggled donkey skins, about 520 kilograms of suspected smuggled sea cucumbers, about 2kg of suspected smuggled fish maws and about one tonne of suspected scheduled dried shark fins, with a total estimated market value of about $2 million. The donkey skin seizure is the biggest ever in Hong Kong.

     Through risk assessment, Customs officers in the first case selected and inspected a container declared to be carrying table salt that arrived in Hong Kong from Egypt. The batch of suspected smuggled donkey skins, sea cucumbers and fish maws was found inside the container. An investigation is ongoing.

     This is the second donkey skin smuggling case detected by Customs within a week. Customs officers seized about 16 tonnes of suspected smuggled donkey skins from a container on April 9, which also arrived in Hong Kong from Egypt and was declared to be carrying table salt. Donkey skin has a wide variety of uses. After processing, it could be manufactured as donkey-hide gelatin, also known as “Ejiao”.

     The second sea-bound smuggling case yesterday was also detected through risk assessment. Customs officers selected a container arriving in Hong Kong from Sri Lanka for inspection and found the batch of suspected scheduled dried shark fins mix-loaded with non-scheduled dried shark fins inside the container. The case was handed over to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department for follow-up investigation.

     Smuggling is a serious offence. Under the Import and Export Ordinance, any person found guilty of importing or exporting unmanifested cargo is liable to a maximum fine of $2 million and imprisonment for seven years.

     Under the Protection of Endangered Species of Animals and Plants Ordinance, any person found guilty of importing or exporting an endangered species without a licence is liable to a maximum fine of $10 million and imprisonment for 10 years.

     Customs will continue to step up stringent enforcement actions to combat smuggling and other illegal activities through passenger and cargo channels at the airport, seaport and all land boundary control points.

     Members of the public may report any suspected smuggling activities to Customs’ 24-hour hotline 2545 6182 or its dedicated crime-reporting email account (crimereport@customs.gov.hk).

    

     A spokesperson for the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau said today (April 16) that to support businesses and ease the cash flow difficulties of government contractors during the pandemic period, the Government would handle non-works contract payment schedules as flexibly as possible.

     In response to the challenges arising from the COVID-19 epidemic, the Chief Executive announced on April 8 a series of measures involving over $130 billion to help keep businesses going, maintain employment and relieve financial burdens of individuals and businesses. To this end, the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury (SFST) has appealed to all procuring departments to do their best to handle payment schedules for their goods or service contracts flexibly as appropriate. 

     The spokesperson said, “Specifically, in cases where the contracts involve upfront payments or milestone payments, procuring departments are urged to provide larger sums for upfront payments to the contractors and break up milestones in payment schedules into more deliverables, thereby enabling more timely and frequent payments to help ease the cash flow difficulties of government contractors.”

     In addition, to help further improve the liquidity of the contractors, the SFST has earlier advised procuring departments to settle payments to contractors expeditiously upon satisfactory completion of deliverables and receipt of proper invoices. Bureaux/departments should also exercise maximum flexibility and do their best to compress their normal payment cycle from 30 days to two weeks, or, where possible, one week while ensuring that the operational needs of the procuring departments and reasonable protection of the Government’s interests are not compromised. read more

     Further to the external merchandise trade statistics in value terms for February 2020 released earlier on, the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) released today (April 16) the volume and price statistics of external merchandise trade for that month.
 
     As the trade flows in January and February of each year tend to show considerable volatilities due to differences in timing of the Lunar New Year holidays, it is useful to analyse the trade figures for these two months taken together. Comparing the first two months of 2020 with the same period in 2019, the volume of Hong Kong’s total exports of goods and imports of goods decreased by 11.8% and 9.1% respectively.
 
     In February 2020, the volume of Hong Kong’s total exports of goods and imports of goods increased by 5.4% and 0.9% respectively over February 2019.
 
     Comparing the three-month period ending February 2020 with the preceding three months on a seasonally adjusted basis, the volume of total exports of goods and imports of goods decreased by 7.5% and 5.4% respectively.
 
     Changes in volume of external merchandise trade are derived from changes in external merchandise trade value with the effect of price changes discounted.
 
     As regards price changes in the first two months of 2020 over the same period in 2019, the prices of total exports of goods and imports of goods decreased by 0.2% and 0.1% respectively.
 
     Comparing February 2020 with February 2019, the prices of total exports of goods and imports of goods both decreased by 1.0%.
 
     Price changes in external merchandise trade are reflected by changes in unit value indices of external merchandise trade, which are compiled based on average unit values or, for certain commodities, specific price data.
 
     The terms of trade index is derived from the ratio of price index of total exports of goods to that of imports of goods. Compared with the same periods in 2019, the index remained virtually unchanged in February 2020, while it decreased by 0.2% in the first two months of 2020.

     Changes in the unit value and volume of total exports of goods by main destination are shown in Table 1.
 
     Comparing February 2020 with February 2019, double-digit increases were recorded for the total export volume to Vietnam (48.1%), Taiwan (34.8%), India (29.2%) and the mainland of China (the Mainland) (13.4%). On the other hand, the total export volume to the USA decreased by 13.5%.
 
     Over the same period of comparison, the total export prices to India (-4.3%), Vietnam (-2.3%), the USA (-1.4%) and the Mainland (-0.1%) decreased. On the other hand, the total export prices to Taiwan increased by 2.7%.
 
     Changes in the unit value and volume of imports of goods by main supplier are shown in Table 2.
 
     Comparing February 2020 with February 2019, double-digit increases were recorded for the import volume from Taiwan (45.1%), Korea (34.4%), Japan (12.1%) and Singapore (11.9%). On the other hand, the import volume from the Mainland decreased by 6.7%.
 
     Over the same period of comparison, the import prices from Taiwan (-3.6%), Korea (-2.1%), the Mainland (-1.9%) and Singapore (-0.1%) decreased. On the other hand, the import prices from Japan increased by 0.8%.
 
Further information
 
     Details of the above statistics are published in the February 2020 issue of “Hong Kong Merchandise Trade Index Numbers”.  Users can download the publication free of charge at the website of the C&SD (www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp230.jsp?productCode=B1020006).
 
     Enquiries on merchandise trade indices may be directed to the Trade Analysis Section (1) of the C&SD (Tel: 2582 4918). read more

     The Government today (April 16) appointed 13 members to the Task Force for the Study on Tenancy Control of Subdivided Units for a term of 18 months till October 2021.        The Government attaches gr… read more