Social Welfare

Poverty Alleviation

• Inject $15 billion into the Community Care Fund

Elderly Services

• Allocate $8.3 billion for payment of the Old Age Living Allowance, to benefit more than 400 000 elderly people
• Allocate $380 million from the Lotteries Fund to launch the first phase of the Pilot Scheme on Community CareService Voucher for the Elderly
• Increase expenditure by $73 million for the provision of 600 additional subsidised places
• Allocate an additional $164 million to increase the subvention for 7 000 places with continuum of care by 10 per cent, and to upgrade 7 850 ordinary places in subvented residential care homes for the elderly to places with continuum of care
• Allocate an additional $160 million to provide 1 200 places under the two-year full-time Enrolled Nurse Training Programmes for the welfare sector

Rehabilitation Services for the Disabled

• Allocate an additional $35.6 million to provide 145 new places each for residential and day training services
• Allocate an additional $67.9 million to increase the manpower of residential care homes and day training centres
• Allocate an additional $203 million to regularise the home care service for persons with severe disabilities

Healthcare

Healthcare

• Optimise the management of specialist out-patient clinics to shorten the waiting time
• Add 290 acute patient beds and convalescent beds
• Use $8 billion to redevelop Kwai Chung Hospital
• Enhance community support for patients with severe mental illness
• Allocate $44 million to include in the Drug Formulary two chemotherapeutic drugs and expand the clinical application of two special drugs for treating advanced Parkinson’s disease and cancer

Infrastructure

Land Supply

• Include in the Land Sale Programme 46 residential sites, of which 28 are new sites
• Include 9 sites for commercial/business use, providing a total floor area of 330 000 square metres
• Carry out studies and design work relating to reclamation outside Victoria Harbour on an appropriate scale, opening up of new development area, etc

Infrastructure

• Capital works expenditure for next year will reach $70 billion, creating about 75 000 job opportunities

Education

Education

• Inject $5 billion into the Language Fund
• Inject $480 million to set up scholarships for 20 outstanding students to pursue studies overseas. Awardees must
undertake to be teachers upon graduation
• Inject $40 million to establish scholarships to give recognition to outstanding tertiary students with special education needs
• Allocate $12 million to the Vocational Training Council to support students with special education needs

• Inject $15 billion into the Employees Retraining Board
• Establish a $100 million training fund for maritime and aviation transport to attract young people to enrol in related skills training
• Set up a task force to study manpower development in the retail industry

Environment

Environment

• Earmark $10 billion to phase out old diesel commercial vehicles
• Inject $5 billion into the Environment and Conservation Fund
• Earmark $500 million to set up waste electrical and electronic equipment processing facilities and five community green stations
• Take forward organic waste treatment facilities in Siu Ho Wan on Lantau

Economic Outlook

• There is a modest improvement in our economy this year. Forecast GDP growth is between 1.5% and 3.5%
• Inflation will be subject to upward pressure. The average rate of headline inflation for the year isestimated at 4.5%, and the underlying inflation is 4.2%