Tony Kwok

Opinion | Use Hong Kong’s consumption voucher scheme to boost elderly vaccinations and ease into sales tax

While another round of consumption vouchers is welcome, there are concerns money is being wasted on emigrants and not leveraged in the fight against Covid-19

The vouchers should be a financial incentive for the elderly to get vaccinated, and the government can use the voucher system to introduce sales tax

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Low-income families gather at the Society for Community Organisation office to watch Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po’s budget speech on February 23. News of another round of government consumption vouchers has been welcomed but also stirred concerns about potential impacts on the elderly and low-income groups. Photo: Jelly Tse

Tony Kwok

Published: 4:30pm, 5 Mar 2022

Hong Kong’s 2022-23 budget has largely responded to public expectations. The most welcome measure is the distribution of HK$10,000 (US$1,280) in electronic consumption vouchers to 6.6 million residents.

However, there are two areas of public concern about its application which deserve consideration by the government. The first is that the vouchers are available to those citizens who have emigrated to foreign countries as long as they are on the recipient list of last year’s consumption vouchers.

Many Hong Kong citizens emigrated to foreign countries last year, and in February this year, a total of 94,305 people left the city, according to official data. Common sense would suggest that these people should no longer be eligible for this benefit.

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There is the notion that it would take time to single out these emigrants, which would defeat the object of providing benefits to the needy as soon as possible. I can think of at least two counterarguments to this, though.

While it might be difficult to identify those who have emigrated, all the government needs to do is compile a list of those who are now outside Hong Kong. This list should not be difficult to retrieve from the digital arrival and departure records of the Immigration Department.

Those on the departure list would be excluded from the initial release of the new consumption voucher. This approach cannot be criticised because those currently outside Hong Kong would not have the chance or the need to use the consumption vouchers anyway.

A system can be put in place, with the assistance of the Immigration Department, to automatically release the funds to those who subsequently return to Hong Kong. Those who have emigrated would not get the voucher unless they take the trouble of returning to Hong Kong, and few would be expected to do so. Hence, we would save a lot of public money.

Also, the suggested timing of releasing the initial HK$5,000 first payment in April is most questionable. Medical experts predict Hong Kong will be at the peak of the fifth wave in mid-March and will only see a gradual decline in April. Releasing the vouchers then would only encourage the public to risk going out to spend the money and prolonging the pandemic. It makes better sense to release the funds in May instead.