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The Government has proposed to increase the licence fees for special effects operators and permit fees relating to producing special effects in film production and entertainment programmes by 5.5 per cent to 8.3 per cent. The existing fees range from $125 to $7,050.
The Entertainment Special Effects (Fees) (Amendment) Regulation 2013 was gazetted today (March 22) to propose increasing the fees with effect from May 29, 2013, subject to the approval of the Legislative Council through the negative vetting procedure.
A spokesman for the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau said that the fee increase was mainly attributable to the increase in staff costs despite the streamlining of licensing procedures for processing the applications.
"Since the proposed fee increase is not significant in dollar terms, we expect that it will have little impact on the operating costs of the film and entertainment industry.
"The revision of the fees is in line with the government policy of the 'user pays' principle that fees should generally be set at levels sufficient to recover the full cost of providing the services," the spokesman said.
Ends/Friday, March 22, 2013
Issued at HKT 16:13
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