Letters | Hong Kong must not sacrifice rent deferral for small businesses at the altar of big business interests

Readers discuss opposition to the financial secretary’s rental deferral proposal for small firms, guidance needed on deciding the seriousness of illness, the proposed closed-loop for care homes, the recently issued emergency alert, and the role of district councils

Reading Time:4 minutes

A woman walks down a deserted street with shuttered shops in SoHo, Hong Kong, on February 28. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 11:30am, 14 Mar 2022

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at [email protected] or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po should be applauded for his creative rental deferral scheme and the chief executive should back him to the hilt without equivocation (“Finance chief’s rental deferral plan for small Hong Kong firms in trouble”, March 10).

Small businesses have been abruptly ordered to close for months, with only meagre and delayed government handouts as compensation.

In large part, these businesses provide many of the services that give our city its life – restaurants, bars, gyms, yoga and dance studios, beauty spas and so on. They do this in a very difficult environment, even at the best of times, given Hong Kong’s high rents and short-term leases. Many of them operate with only a small financial cushion that never allowed for such draconian shutdowns.

Property developers and most landlords, by contrast, have been enjoying the munificence of the US Federal Reserve since 2008 with the historically low cost of financing combining with an unending increase in capital values. It is a disgrace that in their self-interested myopia, they should be prevailing upon the government to cancel the rental deferral plan.

Are they so ignorant as to not appreciate their good fortune? Why should they not share in the pain being inflicted upon their tenants and also help them to stay in business, which will benefit all in the longer term?