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Following is a transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Mr Gregory So, at a media session before attending the Legislative Council meeting today (January 22):
Reporter: (Funding support for the new Broadcasting House)
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development: Thank you for your question. As I just explained earlier, the new Broadcasting House is really a continuity of the mission as well as the new added services of the RTHK after a long process of review and consultation. And according to the needs of the new services that will be provided by RTHK, on that basis, the whole new Broadcasting House was designed and has gone through the process of tendering. Now we have the tender result. We come back here to Legislative Council (LegCo) to seek for funding support. As you know, it was voted down on January 3. On that basis, even though we have followed the due process, notwithstanding that and with this concern of the LegCo Members, we went back on the drawing board and tried our best to reduce the cost of the building without having to go through a re-tendering process. The latest is that, with our best effort at this moment, we could reduce it by $724 million, and that is about 12% of the whole construction cost, which is quite significant. On this basis, my colleagues from RTHK as well as the Architectural Services Department and our bureau have commenced a new effort to lobby for support of LegCo Members.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Issued at HKT 22:02
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