The Financial Secretary delivered the 2025-26 Budget earlier today, proposing a reinforced version of the fiscal consolidation programme.
Over the past year, under the leadership of the Chief Executive, the SAR Government has made all-out, concerted efforts to build a vibrant economy, seek development opportunities and improve people’s livelihood. Hong Kong’s economy is developing steadily and people’s livelihood improving. With enhancing governance capabilities and effectiveness, the civil service has rendered full support to the Chief Executive in his administration of Hong Kong and has successfully met various key performance indicators set out in the Policy Address. In the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2024, Hong Kong’s ranking in “Government Efficiency” was among the global top three, which is due recognition of our civil servants’ performance.
To adhere to the guiding principle of fiscal prudence, the Government will implement the reinforced version of the fiscal consolidation programme in 2025-26. Among other measures, the Productivity Enhancement Programme will be stepped up to achieve a cumulative reduction of government recurrent expenditure by seven per cent from now through 2027-28, part of which will be realised by a reduction in the civil service establishment by two per cent each in 2026-27 and 2027-28. By 1 April 2027, about 10 000 posts are expected to be deleted within this term of Government. Furthermore, civil service pay will be frozen in 2025-26.
I believe colleagues will appreciate that the fiscal consolidation programme as a whole is essential to the development of Hong Kong. In fact, under all circumstances, government departments should strive to enhance efficiency and contain their establishment by reviewing work priorities, reallocating internal resources, streamlining procedures and leveraging technology. Zero growth in the civil service establishment has been the objective since 2021-22. To take forward new policies and initiatives of the Government and cope with an increase in workload, bureaux and departments have since introduced a number of reforms, achieving not only zero growth but a reduction of about 2 000 posts by end-March 2025. I hope that colleagues will keep up your good work on this front, daring to break new ground with an innovative mindset, further embracing technology and making better use of human resources to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
I am confident that with the concerted efforts of the civil service, we can make more flexible use of our resources to serve the public proactively and promote the high-quality development of Hong Kong, thereby burnishing our long-standing reputation.
