Budget 2025: Pro-Beijing lawmakers praise budget, as Democratic Party urges pay cut for senior officials
Hong Kong Free Press
Additional reporting: Hans Tse.
Hong Kong’s Democratic Party has criticised the financial secretary’s new budget, saying senior officials’ salaries should be cut, not just frozen – in contrast to a thumbs up given by many pro-Beijing lawmakers.
At a press conference held shortly after Financial Secretary Paul Chan’s budget speech on Wednesday, the embattled pro-democracy party said they did not think the measures announced went far enough.
Lo Kin-hei, the party’s chairperson, said the public perception of the budget was that residents were left worse off, while top officials – who Lo said earned some of the highest government salaries in the world – were relatively untouched.
“The overall feeling… is whether principal officials are facing the difficulties of the deficit together [with everyone else],” Lo said in Cantonese.
Chan announced that the government would freeze the salaries of public servants as part of cost-cutting measures to tackle Hong Kong’s ongoing deficit. The city logged an estimated shortfall of HK$87.2 billion in 2024-25 – marking the third consecutive fiscal year in the red.
The pay freeze would affect all civil servants, as well as the chief executive, political appointees, judges, lawmakers, and district councillors.
Chan also said the government would cut 10,000 civil service jobs over the next two years.
Lo said the Democratic Party had called for the salaries of those earning more than HK$150,000 per month to be cut. Such means was already “extremely restrained,” he added.
He said reforming Hong Kong’s civil service, as well as eliminating redundant posts, was long overdue, but the plan to reduce 10,000 jobs was insufficient given that the city employed around 170,000 civil servants.
The Democratic Party’s press conference was held a week after the party announced that it was in discussion about disbanding, citing politics. The party, which no longer has lawmakers in the Legislative Council following reforms in 2021 that guaranteed a “patriots only” chamber, is Hong Kong’s largest opposition party.
‘All-out effort’ to cut costs
Meanwhile, many lawmakers said they were pleased with the budget overall.
At a separate press conference on Wednesday, Gary Chan, lawmaker and chair of the pro-Beijing party the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), said that he supported the pay freeze.
“When deciding on the pay freeze, the government balanced civil servants’ morale, demands from society and other factors,” the lawmaker said.
However, he pointed out that the government’s decision to reduce public service posts by 2 per cent in the next two years fell short of the DAB’s calls for a 3 per cent cut in each bureau’s expenditure.
“Under the condition that people’s [welfare] is not affected, there is room for more reduction,” he added.
DAB lawmaker Vincent Cheng praised the finance chief for making an “all-out effort” to reduce government expenditure.
“You will note from the speech today that he pledged to axe the operating costs [by] 7 percent in the next three years,” Cheng said. “So you could see the passion and determination in doing this.”
‘No way ahead’
Not all legislators, however, were pleased with the budget. Lawmaker Junius Ho expressed disappointment, saying he could not see if the government had “the will” to slash public spending, as he called Chan’s cost-cutting measures “patchwork remedies.”
Drawing attention to Chan’s projection of a record HK$822.3 billion government expenditure in the coming fiscal year – up from HK$754.8 billion in the 2024-25 financial year, he said he was unconvinced that measures – including a pay freeze for all public servants – could effectively restore a fiscal balance.
“In English, there’s a saying: When there is a will, there is a way. But I don’t see the will there, so therefore, there is no way ahead. This is stupid, very stupid,” Ho said, adding that he would vote against the budget.
Lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen said that as a representative from the social welfare sector, he welcomed the measures that aimed at improving the livelihood of the low-income, including increasing the number of spots in elderly homes and giving more subsidies for recipients of the government welfare initiative, the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA).
“Of course, I would hope to see more of an increase, but even with a tight budget, the finance chief was still willing to do a little something in this aspect,” Tik said in Cantonese. “I welcome that.”
However, he said the 2 per cent cut in recurrent government expenditure would leave the city’s poorest worse off.
“The finance chief always says we have to care about [the livelihoods] of the grassroots,” he said. “If you reduce welfare spending, it will definitely affect their well-being.”
HK$2 public transport scheme
Another widely debated topic ahead of the budget speech was the HK$2 transport fare – the flat, concessionary fee that the elderly, defined as those aged 60 and above, and eligible persons with disabilities pay for public transportation.
Paul Chan unveiled changes to the fare scheme on Wednesday. Instead of a flat HK$2 fare for all public transport journeys, the government would only retain the discounted fare for trips below HK$10.
For trips above HK$10, the beneficiaries would need to pay 20 per cent of the original fare, while the government would pay for the remaining 80 per cent.
There would also be a cap of 240 trips per month, as opposed to unlimited journeys before.
The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) said it welcomed the government retaining the scheme, saying it encouraged the elderly to leave their homes and take up employment.
Bill Tang, a lawmaker from the FTU, said he hoped there would be no further modifications to the scheme.
“We maintain that [the scheme] has more upsides than downsides for the elderly and the society. What’s crucial is how to use resources wisely,” Tang said, adding that bus companies should tie fares to the distance travelled instead of charging a flat fee to reduce government expenditure.
Lawmaker Stanley Li of the DAB said that he believed the new scheme would affect people who lived further away and needed to travel long distances. Their fares may be more than HK$10, meaning they’d need to pay 20 per cent of the costs.
“That means their transport cost burden would increase,” he said. Like Tang, Li also suggested that bus fares should be based on the distance travelled.
Tik said he doubted that the government would be able to earn much from modifying the HK$2 fare, considering the government would still have to pay 80 per cent of fares for trips over HK$10 and that the cap for subsidised trips was set at 240 journeys per month.
“I estimate it would save HK$500 million or HK$600 million a year… in the face of the current financial situation, it’s not a big sum. Yet, it mainly affects elderly commuters,” he said.
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