Following is the transcript of remarks by the Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, at a media session before attending a cocktail reception of the 10th Asian Financial Forum today (January 16).
 
Reporter: What would you say to your critics who say that you don't qualify for the job, you're not popular enough, as well as what are your priorities at this moment?
 
Financial Secretary: Thank you. Well, I think over the past four and a half years, we can have an objective assessment as to the performance of myself as Secretary for Development and the performance of the team led by me. In fact, we have been doing our very best to try to solve the land shortage issue facing Hong Kong, and we have gained considerable progress.
 
     I work for the people of Hong Kong. I care about performance. I do not work purely for popularity.  As to the critics about my experience in the field of financial services, public finance, I would like to say that before I joined the Government, I have been in the accounting sector for over 30 years, serving in government departments, listed companies as well as accountancy firms. I am also involved in the service of the accounting sector, and in that capacity represent Hong Kong on quite a number of international organisations. During my term as Legislative Councillor, I got involved in the financial affairs panel, economic development panel, commerce and industry panel. And over my period of service with the accounting sector, I took part in overseas promotions together with Trade Development Council to the Mainland and many overseas countries to promote Hong Kong and to promote Hong Kong's professional services. So I do believe I have the experience and the knowledge and the connection and contacts that would help me to perform my job as the Financial Secretary for the Special Administrative Region.
      
     As to the priorities of my work, understandably the first and foremost short-term priority is to work with the team to prepare the Budget for the coming financial year. In that process, I will take a hard look of our public finance situations and see what can be done to enhance our competitiveness and to try to explore means, to explore new economic development areas and provide support to those rising sectors. The purpose is to do our best to enable different sectors in the community, so that they can share the economic fruit of our economic success and to provide more job opportunities, more diversified job opportunities, for our young people so that they can choose their career by reference to their aptitude and interests.
 
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
 

Ends/Monday, January 16, 2017
Issued at HKT 21:01

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