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Written by: Commentary Editing Room
2021-03-19 07:00
Last update date: 2021-03-19 07:00
The Census and Statistics Department announced on Thursday (March 18) the gross domestic product by economic activity for the fourth quarter of 2020. Preliminary figures show that most industries have contracted due to the epidemic in the past year. Among them are "accommodation and meal services", Both the "wholesale and retail industries" saw the biggest declines. However, there are also some industries that are able to succeed in the "epidemic market", such as "finance and insurance", "information and communications", "postal and courier services" and other fields. Can continue to grow, and even record a higher increase previously.
Based on the quarter-on-quarter volume in 2018, the GDP of economic activities in the fields of "finance and insurance" and "information and communications" in 2020 will be 571.571 billion Hong Kong dollars and 97.249 billion Hong Kong dollars, respectively, representing a year-on-year increase of 3.9% and 1.6%; In contrast, the GDP of economic activities in the areas of "accommodation and catering services" and "wholesale and retail industry" were HK$47.376 billion and HK$53.094 billion, respectively, representing a year-on-year decrease of 43.0% and 44.0%, which is enough to reflect The performance of different industries under the epidemic has indeed been mixed.
It is particularly interesting that some industries performed well last year and even achieved good results in the past few years. For example, the total economic value of "agriculture, fishing, mining and quarrying" broke the decline for six consecutive years and recorded an annual increase of 4.6%. The 12.1% growth rate in the “Express Service” field is the best in ten years. If it is simply calculated, its economic value can even reach the highest level since 2000, like the two fields of “Finance and Insurance” and “Information and Communication”.
The Hong Kong government has launched many job-guarantee programs, but they have still not been able to solve the difficulties in the job market.
(Photo/Photo by Zheng Zifeng)
Government subsidies are inaccurate
When the government proposed the "Protecting Employment" plan last year, it has been criticized for subsidizing industries that are profitable under the epidemic. We also pointed out that we can refer to Singapore's practice to make funding more precise.
In addition, the "Anti-epidemic Anti-epidemic Fund" first allocated 120 million Cyberport companies in July last year to implement the "Anti-epidemic Fund Fintech Talents Program" to fund related companies to open 1,000 jobs, and another 180 million yuan was allocated to the Financial Development Bureau in September. The "Financial Services Industry Job Creation Program" subsidized the financial services industry to create 1,500 jobs, and then decided at the beginning of this month to "enhance" the latter, but the impact of the epidemic on the financial industry is actually quite limited.
In addition to the output value of economic activities, other data can also support that related industries do not necessarily need to spend public money to provide subsidies.
According to the "Quarterly Statistics Report on Employment and Vacancies" by the Census and Statistics Department, between September 2019 and September 2020, the number of employees in the financial and insurance industry increased from 237,405 to 239,039, which is second only to the double-digit increase in employment. Mining and quarrying industry; during the same period, job vacancies decreased from 6,144 to 4,967, and the decline was also the lowest among all industries with publicly available information. It can be seen that they are by no means a priority in need of support.
This kind of inaccuracy of subsidy targets has occurred one after another in the past year. It is revealing that the senior officials of the Hong Kong government lack a sense of prioritization in their decision-making. As a result, companies that do not really need public funding are funded instead. On the contrary, others should receive government support. The disadvantaged grassroots cannot be allocated sufficient resources.
In this case, the use of public financial expenditure has naturally become inefficient, and the public's criticism of collusion between government and business or the transfer of interests is also on their own account.
Just earlier, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council convened an executive meeting to determine the key tasks of the "Government Work Report", which mentioned that it should "speed up the expansion of direct fiscal funds to the grassroots level, and focus on ensuring employment, protecting people's livelihood, and protecting market players." .
In recent years, senior officials of the Hong Kong government have repeatedly emphasized the need to respect the central government for political reasons. It is unknown whether they realize that they are not up to the standard in serving the society as an important responsibility.
In the past, officials even presided over the democrats to get in the way, but now the excuses no longer exist, and there is no even the last cover for ugliness.
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