港府欲借预算案驱散占中阴霾

HONG KONG — Two months after protesters were cleared from the streets, the Hong Kong government announced on Wednesday a budget full of tax breaks and other handouts to provide economic support to the lower and middle classes, as well as businesses that it said had been disrupted by 11 weeks of demonstrations.

香港——周三，在街头的抗议者被清场两个月后，香港政府宣布了一份包含大量赋税减免及其他纾缓措施的预算案，以便为中低阶层和一些企业提供经济支持。政府称，这些企业被持续了11周的示威所扰乱。

“The Occupy movement affected tourism, hotel, catering, retail and transport industries,” John Tsang, the city’s financial secretary, said in his budget speech, adding that the initiatives would help “offset the impact on economic confidence.”

“占领行动对旅游、酒店、饮食、零售和运输等行业造成不同程度的影响，”香港政府财政司司长曾俊华(John Tsang)在预算案发言中说，并接着表示相关措施将有助于“重建信心”。

Hong Kong’s widening wealth gap and increasingly unaffordable housing emerged as catalysts for last year’s democracy protests, and Mr. Tsang offered several measures intended to help address these issues.

香港日渐扩大的贫富差距和越来越难以承受的房价，成了去年民主抗议的催化剂。曾俊华提出了几项旨在帮助解决这些问题的措施。

He announced one-time items that included tax breaks on salaries and profits; increased funding for small and medium-size companies; increased welfare payments for the poor and the elderly; and a one-month rent waiver for low-income tenants of public housing.

他宣布了一些一次性的措施，包括针对薪俸和利润的税收减免、增加对中小型公司的资助、提高对穷困人口和老人的福利救济，以及减免公租房低收入租户一个月的房租。

He also increased the permitted tax deduction for raising children, a recurrent measure, and estimated the cost of all these handouts at 34 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $4.4 billion.

他还增加了子女免税额，这是一个常见的措施。他预计，所有这些纾缓措施的成本为340亿港币。

Mr. Tsang also announced measures worth 290 million dollars that he said were intended to help Hong Kong recover from the effects of the Occupy protests.

曾俊华还宣布了一项价值2.9亿美元的措施，旨在帮助香港从占领抗议活动的影响中恢复过来。

Those included license fee waivers for travel agents, hotels, restaurants and taxis and buses, as well as increased spending to promote Hong Kong as a travel destination.

其中包括向旅行社、酒店、餐馆、出租车和巴士发放免费牌照，以及增加开支用于宣传香港作为旅游目的地的形象。

But later in his speech, Mr. Tsang noted that tourist arrivals to Hong Kong had increased 12 percent last year, while their total spending rose 9 percent, to more than 350 billion Hong Kong dollars. In October, at the height of the protests, arrivals from mainland China, Hong Kong’s biggest source of tourists, rose 18 percent, according to figures from the tourism board.

但在接下来的发言中，曾俊华指出，香港去年接待的游客人数增加了12%，游客总共消费逾3500亿港币，增幅9%。从来自旅游发展局的数据来看，在去年10月抗议处于高峰期时，中国内地赴港人数增幅18%。中国内地是香港最大的游客来源地。

The risk to the measures announced on Wednesday and other large government spending programs, like fiscal initiatives to help a rapidly aging population, is that public opposition after the Occupy protests could leave the government hamstrung.

周三宣布的措施以及其他一些大型政府开支计划——如旨在帮助迅速老龄化的人口的财政措施——所面临的风险是，占领抗议结束后的民众反对可能会束缚政府的手脚。

“Is the government still going to have the basic consent among the population to draw up and implement economic policies — tackling the aging issue or getting infrastructure done, for example?” said Andrew Colquhoun, head of Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings in Hong Kong. “That’s still an open question, whether that political constraint becomes more binding for them.”

“政府在起草和实施经济政策时，还能得到民众起码的认可吗，比如解决老龄化问题或建设基础设施？”惠誉(Fitch Ratings)驻香港亚太区主权评级负责人高翰德(Andrew Colquhoun)说。“政治限制对它们的约束力是否增加了，这还是一个悬而未决的问题。”

Mr. Tsang suggested that this might be the case, expressing frustration with the pace of funding approvals from the local legislature, the Legislative Council, also known as LegCo, which features a minority of directly elected members who are pro-democracy and supported the protests.

曾俊华表示情况可能的确是这样，他对香港立法机构立法会(Legislative Council)拨款批复进度表达了不满。在立法会，支持民主和抗议活动的直选立委属少数群体。

“With a number of projects entering their construction peaks, capital works expenditure is expected to maintain at relatively high levels in the next few years,” Mr. Tsang said. “We are, however, concerned about the sluggish progress of deliberation in LegCo since the last session. This has resulted in the mounting of backlog of funding proposals.”

“现时多项工程正处于施工高峰期，预计基本工程开支在往后数年会维持在较高水平，”曾俊华说。“但令人忧虑的是，自上个立法年度至今，立法会审议工程项目的进度缓慢，积压大量拨款建议。”

Although outlays for social welfare and education are set to rise, a major target of government spending in the coming year will be large-scale infrastructure projects — expenditures that often benefit the wealthy elite, who control the city’s property developers and construction companies.

尽管社会福利和教育开支将增加，未来一年政府开支的重要目标仍将是大型基建项目。这类开支常常会让富裕的精英受益，他们掌控着香港的房地产开发商和建筑公司。

Hong Kong is spending billions of dollars on several megaprojects that have been subject to significant delays and cost overruns. These include nearly $10 billion on a 50-kilometer, or 31-mile, bridge and tunnel to the cities of Macau and Zhuhai, across the mouth of the Pearl River from Hong Kong; $6 billion on a new cluster of theaters and arts venues; $9 billion on a high-speed rail link to Guangzhou, in southern China; and $14 billion on extensions to the local subway system.

香港正在多个大型项目上投入数十、上百亿美元的资金。这些项目的进度已严重滞后，并且多次超出成本预期。其中包括投资近100亿美元建造一条50公里的桥梁和隧道，将香港与澳门以及珠江口对岸的珠海相联通；投资60亿美元建造一批新的剧院和艺术场馆；投资90亿美元建造一条通向内地南方城市广州的高铁；以及投资140亿美元延长香港的地铁系统的项目。

Mr. Tsang said work on a third runway for the Hong Kong International Airport, estimated in 2011 to cost at least $18 billion, could begin next year and finish by 2023, though a final budget has yet to be announced.

曾俊华说，香港国际机场第三条跑道的建设可能于明年开始，2023年竣工，不过仍然没有宣布最终的预算。2011年对该项目的成本估计为至少180亿美元。

There is little doubt Hong Kong’s government can afford the largess. Mr. Tsang estimated the budget surplus for the fiscal year that ends on March 31 at 64 billion dollars, up from his estimate of 9 billion dollars a year ago.

毫无疑问，香港政府有能力负担这些费用。曾俊华估计，截至3月31日的财年，港府的预算盈余为640亿美元，高于他本人一年前估计的90亿美元。

Repeated larger-than-anticipated surpluses have left the government with an embarrassment of riches. Fiscal reserves are now forecast to rise to 856 billion dollars by the end of March 2016, equal to 37 percent of gross domestic product. The reserves could cover 23 months’ worth of government expenditure.

连续多年高于预期的预算盈余让港府积累了大量财富。预计香港的财政储备到2016年3月将增长到8560亿美元，相当于GDP的37%。这些储备可以负担23个月的政府支出。

That figure does not include excess reserves of 635 billion dollars in the Exchange Fund, which the government set up to backstop the local currency’s peg to the United States dollar and which generates its own large surpluses.

这个数字还不包括外汇基金(Exchange Fund)中储备的6350亿美元，港府设立这一基金是为了保障港币与美元挂钩的做法，与此同时，该基金本身则产生了大量盈余。

“They are right to a certain extent to be putting money away for a rainy day, rather than just blowing it all in one go, because there’s always been the concern that the tax base here is very narrow,” said Charles Kinsley, a tax partner at KPMG China, based in Hong Kong.

“把钱存起来以备不时之需，而不是一下子花完，这种做法有一定的合理性，因为一直有人担心，香港的税收基数太小，”毕马威中国(KPMG China)在香港的税务合伙人甘兆年(Charles Kinsley)说。

Hong Kong’s tax rates are extremely low, at 15 percent for individuals and 16.5 percent for companies. On top of that, only 40 percent of Hong Kong’s work force pays salary tax, while only 10 percent of registered companies pay any tax on profits. Instead, the government relies heavily on profits from land sales and, more recently, temporary taxes on real estate transactions that were intended to cool the property market but have turned into money makers.

香港的税率非常之低，个人需缴纳的税率为15%，企业为16.5%。此外，只有40%的香港劳动者缴纳薪俸税，10%的注册企业缴纳利得税。政府严重依赖土地销售带来的收益，以及不久前临时设立的房地产交易税。此举旨在为房地产市场降温，却成了一个主要的收入来源。

Another more recent risk is Hong Kong’s growing ties to mainland China, where economic growth last year declined to its slowest pace in 24 years. Exposure to mainland interests accounted for only 10 percent of Hong Kong banking system assets in 2008, but that figure rose to about 40 percent as of mid-2014.

另一个新近出现的风险是香港与中国内地日益强化的关系。去年，中国内地的经济增速降到了24年的最低水平。对内地的利率风险敞口仅占香港银行系统资产的10%，但这一数字在2014年中期增长到了40%左右。

“Hong Kong is becoming increasingly integrated with the mainland economy, both through trade and financial linkages, which is kind of a double-edged sword,” said Mr. Colquhoun of Fitch.

“通过贸易和金融关联，香港与内地经济的整合程度越来越高，这在某种程度上是一把双刃剑，”惠誉的高翰德说。

“Being plugged into China in the long run is a structural positive and an overall competitive advantage for Hong Kong,” he said. “But in the shorter to medium term, China is going through a structural economic adjustment, and there are some risks in that for Hong Kong.”

“融入中国内地经济从长期来看是一个结构上的积极因素，能带来整体上的竞争优势，”他说。“但从更短期和中期来看，中国正在经历一次经济结构调整，这对香港构成了风险。”

Also Wednesday, Hong Kong government data showed that the city’s economy grew 2.3 percent last year, compared with 2013, in line with forecasts. The government expects growth of 1 percent to 3 percent this year, Mr. Tsang said.

同样是在周三，港府的数据显示，这座城市的经济去年较2013年增长了2.3%，与预期相符。曾俊华说，政府预计今年的经济增幅将在1%到3%。