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Written by: Commentary Editing Room
2020-12-23 06:45
Last update date: 2020-12-23 06:45
The Dongjiang Water Supply Agreement will expire at the end of the year.
The Development Bureau stated that in the next three years, the water supply agreement will introduce a "turnkey deduction" mechanism to replace the original "turnkey total", that is, deducting water prices for reducing the total amount of imported Dongjiang water.
Even though the new agreement is estimated to reduce the amount Hong Kong needs to pay in the future, in the face of constraints such as the development rate of Dongjiang water resources that is approaching a safe level, extreme weather, and the increasing demand for water in the Greater Bay Area, the Hong Kong government is appropriate to increase the water self-sufficiency ratio as soon as possible. Spread the risk.
Due to the severe shortage of fresh water resources in Hong Kong, the British Hong Kong government realized that rainwater alone could not meet the rapidly growing population in the 1960s. Therefore, the Hong Kong government agreed to purchase Dongjiang water from Guangdong Province in 1964 to solve the shortage of water resources.
At present, Dongjiang water accounts for 70 to 80% of Hong Kong's water supply. The relevant water supply agreement can be roughly divided into two major stages, namely the "fixed water supply period" from 1960 to 2005 and the "flexible water supply period" from 2006.
Although the fixed water supply mechanism allowed Hong Kong to lock in water supply and water price units ahead of time, as the local manufacturing industry moved northward, industrial water consumption plummeted. In the late 1980s, the increase in water supply in Guangdong Province exceeded Hong Kong's real demand.
However, the agreement of the year did not provide for flexible adjustment of the water supply volume, so that even if Hong Kong failed to draw the agreed water supply volume, it would still have to pay a full agreed fee, and the drawing could not be postponed to the next year.
However, since 2006, the Dongjiang Water Supply Agreement has adopted a "turnkey total" approach to flexibly adjust the amount of water delivered to the port on a monthly basis, but the Hong Kong government still has to pay a fixed total water price to Guangdong Province to ensure that the water supply reaches the upper limit of the agreement. Guarantee.
Although the "turnkey total" is more flexible than fixed water supply, Hong Kong has rarely used its share of the port for many years, and the total cost is still far exceeding the actual water consumption. In addition, the price of Dongjiang water sold to Hong Kong by the Guangdong Provincial Water Resources Department is also higher than that of Shenzhen and Shenzhen. In Dongguan, there are also many voices requesting renewal of the agreement.
The Development Bureau stated that it has successfully sought to join the annual water price deduction mechanism in the new Dongjiang Water Agreement.
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Water resources are precious and can be exported
The new agreement adopts a "turnkey deduction" mechanism, which can reduce the water price according to the reduction in the amount of water imported into the Dongjiang River. The "basic water fee" in the next three years will be approximately 14.85 billion yuan, an average annual increase of about 1.3%.
The Development Bureau estimates that the introduction of the deduction mechanism will not only avoid wasting the remaining water resources, but also save water pumping costs. It also expects that the actual payment amount from 2021 to 2029 can be deducted by an average of about 36 million yuan per year.
Even if the new agreement can save a total of 320 million in costs over the next nine years, as the economy of the Greater Bay Area gradually integrates and develops, Hong Kong will also need to explore new water resources in the long run.
First of all, facing the global trend of water shortage, Guangdong Province has a permanent population of 112 million people. However, for many years, the per capita water resource has been less than 1,700 cubic meters, which is lower than the national average of 2,100 cubic meters. Some cities have already experienced water shortages; secondly, The Guangdong authorities also stated that the utilization rate of water resources development in the Dongjiang River Basin has reached 28.6%, which is close to the "safety red line" of 33%.
Under the attack of these two factors, both Hong Kong and Guangdong Province will sooner or later develop broader water supply strategies.
If Hong Kong relies too much on Dongjiang water, it will also increase the burden on Guangdong Province.
Among the various options, desalination can not only increase the self-sufficiency ratio of water in Hong Kong, it is also a technology with great potential for industrialization.
With the start of construction of the Tseung Kwan O desalination plant in 2018, although the government expects that the first phase of the desalination plant can only provide 5% of the fresh water supply, under the influence of the global population expansion and the increasing frequency of extreme weather, desalination Not only can it alleviate the shortage of Dongjiang water resources, it is also a common option for stable water supply internationally.
Compared with the two major exporters of desalination technology, Singapore and Israel, even though Hong Kong's progress is only in its infancy, the Hong Kong government still has to have a long-term macro plan, gradually catch up with international trends, and allocate more resources to water resources technology research and development.
This will not only turn the water resources of the Dongjiang River into an opportunity, but also export technology to foreign countries, making Hong Kong's industrial structure more diversified.
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