The Hong Kong government uses multiple methods to stimulate the economy and we will mainly analyze the policies for citizens.
In 2022, Hong Kong has been recovering from the pandemic. Although the prospect is positive, a large number of enterprises and residents are still weighed down by tremendous pressure due to external and internal economic environments and require support. Hence, this is still a deficit budget overall.
It is clear that the main mission at this stage is still recovery and growth. In the whole budget document, the keywords “development”, “launch”, “expenditure”, “growth”, “enhance” are the high frequency words ，meaning it is what is being put on a priority.
Figure1:wordcloud
The supporting policies and measures section is named “ speedy recovery” , including “1.Attracting Tourists and Enlivening The City’s Image”, “2.Happy Hong Kong”, “3.Electronic Consumption Vouchers”, “4.Supporting Enterprises”, “5.Supporting the General Public”.
Among them, the second,third and fifth sections are relevant to citizens, and we are going to focus on the Electronic Consumption Vouchers in this article.
It was said that different amounts of Consumption Vouchers would be dispensed to the public according to different qualifications. We investigated whether the consumption vouchers are widely known and used by the public. By searching keywords “Consumption Vouchers” on Youtube, we can see the top 10 videos relevant to it and also the view counts of the videos.
Figure 2: Table of top 10 consumer vouchers related videos
Figure 3: Bar chart of top 10 consumer vouchers related videos
From the collected data, the view counts of each video is not that much, ranging from hundreds to thousands. Among them the most viewed video is called “be careful about the purchases through e-consumption voucher scheme”, which was published by South China Morning Post and it warned consumers to be careful when using the “Consumption Vouchers”. In the comment zone below, some complain about the difficulty and cumbersome when claiming Consumption Vouchers. In summary, Consumption Vouchers still needs to improve its dispensing channel and promote ways to let citizens learn about it comprehensively and use it practically.
All in all, the confidence towards the future economy is enough for the Hong Kong government.
“Considering all the above factors and taking into account the catch-up growth in the initial period arising from the continued return of economic activities from the epidemic to normalcy, I forecast that the Hong Kong economy will grow by an average of 3.7 per cent per annum in real terms from 2024 to 2027, higher than the trend growth of 2.8 percent during the decade before the epidemic.”said Financial Secretary the Hon Paul MP Chan in the budget speech.
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Tags: budget speech, Hong Kong