Hong Kong’s former secretary for transport and housing Anthony Cheung has called for a pay freeze for public servants to reduce the city’s huge budget deficit.
In an opinion piece published by Ming Pao on Tuesday, Cheung suggested that the government should freeze civil service salaries, instead of adopting a “one-size-fits-all approach” to cutting public services and public servants’ remuneration.
Former secretary for transport and housing Anthony Cheung. File Photo: GovHK.
Hong Kong’s budget deficit is not cyclical, Cheung said. “The Hong Kong government faces a structural fiscal crisis that cannot be avoided,” he wrote in Chinese.
Cheung, who is now a chair professor in public administration at the Education University of Hong Kong, attributed the deficit to several factors, including geopolitical changes that have raised doubts about foreign investment in Hong Kong, a slowing Chinese economy, an ageing population, and a wave of migration among Hong Kong’s middle class.
He suggested the government should gradually cut costs while focusing on enhancing revenue and “strategically and purposefully reversing the economic situation and foreign perception.”
Pedestrians walk on a footbridge next to the government’s headquarters. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
The previous two fiscal years also saw an annual deficit of over HK$100 billion.
‘Go through the hard times together’
Economist Simon Lee, an honorary fellow at the Asia-Pacific Institute of Business at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, suggested the government cut civil servants’ salaries in the next fiscal year.
Meanwhile, pro-Beijing lawmaker Regina Ip and her New People’s Party recommended freezing the pay for public servants and suspending new hires.
In his Ming Pao opinion piece, Cheung also urged top officials and lawmakers to “go through the hard times together” with the general public while reducing government expenditure, but he did not mention specific measures.
There are around 170,000 civil servants in Hong Kong, whose salaries cost HK$156 billion in 2023-24. All of them enjoyed a salary increase of 3 per cent last April.
