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HK Govt Relief Measures for Covid-19

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  1. #1

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    HK Govt Relief Measures for Covid-19

    Attempting to summarise what I think will be relevant to this audience.

    First Round:

    Handout Amount: HK$ 10,000
    Eligibility: Permanent Residents during the 2020/21 FISCAL YEAR
    Application: Online / print form. Expected to start this summer, pending Finance committee / Legco Approvals. Applications will continue till Dec 2021
    Payment forms: Direct Deposit and by Cheque - you don't need to be in HK to apply or receive the cash

    No idea how this will be implemented and when funds will be delivered.

    Click here for more info / discussion


    Second Round

    Will update implementation details as soon as I find into

    • Employment Support Scheme: All employers who have been making Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) contributions for employees are eligible. The wage subsidy to be provided by the Government is calculated based on 50% of the monthly salary, which is capped at $18,000 (i.e. the median monthly wage in Q2 2019), for a period of six months. I assume this amounts to a maximum of $9,000 / employee.. To be disbursed to employers in two payments, with the first not later than June 2020. Expect to benefit 1.5 million employees.
    • Self Employed Persons: Grant a one-off subsidy to self-employed persons who made MPF contributions (about 215 000 persons). No info available yet..will look for it
    • Employment Creation: To invest $6 billion to create around 30 000 time-limited jobs (up to 12 months) in the public and private sectors in the coming two years for people of different skill sets and academic qualifications, benefitting professionals and technicians, fresh graduates, middle level and grassroots workers.
    • New Funding Schemes: A number of professional, legal and job creation schemes to be launched. Unsure about how these will be rolled out and how quickly funds will be available.
    • Private Education Centers: - Tutorial centers ($40K), Catering, School bus (drivers / bus mothers etc) get some subsidies/allowances, Extra curricular instructors etc will get $7,500. Unsure as to what the implementation will be and what the overlap with the larger $9K per employee scheme will be.
    • Sports Coaches: Registered sports coaches get $7.5K, Refuse collectors get 8K not sure if this is a corp or individual grant.. as the benefit is for 700 collectors,
    • Stock Brokerages/SFC Licensees: $50K for cat B and cat C brokers (> 15 rank by turnover) and $2,000 per SFC licensed individuals.
    • Estate Agents - Amount covers 2 years licensing fee.
    • Taxi and Red Mini drivers: Between $6,000 - $7,500 depending on eligibility criteria. School bus, hire coaches and car owners to get around $30K per bus (not sure if this is per bus or company wide. I am sure it does include Uber.. don't ask!
    • Franchised Transport: 6 months maintenance & insurance costs for franchised bus, ferry and tram operators.
    • Cinemas: $100K per screen
    • Travel Agents: $20K - $200K subject to criteria. Staff, freelance guides & tour escorts get $5000 subsidy for six months.
    • Hotels: $300-400K per hotel. (Not sure if this includes guesthouses etc).
    • Tour bus drivers: $10K one time payment. Not sure what the overlaps are with salary subsidy
    • Construction Sector : $7.5K / construction worker, $20K per contractor, $10K for other registered "minor works workers".
    • Aviation Sector: $1M per large aircraft, $200K for small aircraft not sure if private jets are covered. Cargo and support services - between $1-3M depending on the size of the operator.
    • Catering: $250K-$2.2M for staff salaries. Seems to cover restaurants, refreshment vendors and factory canteens and perhaps more. Undertaking required not to layoff workers. Karaoke, clubs etc which were directed to be closed will get $50K. Cooked food market stalls to get $50K.
    • Fitness centers, amusement venues etc: $100K each (more details in the PDF).
    • SME Financing schemes: A bunch of stuff, but these schemes have been historically hard / impossible to access.
    • Commercial Rentals @ Govt Venues: Rental concessions from 50-75%. Will urge Housing authority, URA and Housing society to extend these to their tenants.
    • Healthcare professionals: Waiver on 3 years registration fees.
    • MTR Fare Reduction: 20% for six months from 1st July. 50-50% split between govt and MTRC.
    • Rental / Loan Waivers for Schools: Student loan holiday for 2 years. Unsure what the international school loan waivers are - 3 schools to benefit.
    • Airport Authority: $2B allocated for "relief measures" - seen hints that this will be used to purchase tickets for distribution / lucky draw(?) of some sort.


    Overall it looks like a fair amount of cash has been handed out to businesses. Hopefully this trickles down to the workers in those sectors and clients.

    Personally keen to see how international schools spend their handouts, since non of them have cut fees for parents.

    Taken from this PDF released by the govt - Click here to download full PDF

    Presentation: https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/pdf/f...ference_en.pdf
    Last edited by shri; 09-04-2020 at 10:31 AM.

  2. #2

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    Reserving this post for any updates.

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  3. #3

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    International school fees...shouldn't parents pressure them to ease a little? In times like this would the parents not have a little more bargaining power? Then again may be not...


  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolboy:
    International school fees...shouldn't parents pressure them to ease a little? In times like this would the parents not have a little more bargaining power? Then again may be not...
    As one school principal posted online:

    Whilst robust parent-school contracts might mean that these issues are likely to be resolved in the school’s favour in time, short-term non-payment does pose a significant problem for schools. Whilst school fees make up the lion share of a school’s income, be aware that a Covid-19 closure is likely to have a significant hit on the income from term-time and holiday lettings.
    Little bargaining power with parents. Lets see if parent lead boards and related groups put pressure - something to the effect- "Consider helping us out a little bit by giving some relief, based on the funds you're receiving from various schemes. Any goodwill or lack of goodwill will be directly reflected back in the coming years when you ask us for more money to support fund raising at the schools".
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  5. #5

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    Seems like this may just be phase 1? Thought I read it was 4% of gdp being spent which is well below what most countries are doing to stimulate.


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    Quote Originally Posted by jw1701:
    Seems like this may just be phase 1? Thought I read it was 4% of gdp being spent which is well below what most countries are doing to stimulate.
    This is round 2. Not sure how much more can or will be given to be fair. $280B being spent right on this + whatever the first round costs were.

    This should take us into the election cycle. After that, lets see what additional fuckery Legco and the functional constituencies deliver.

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    @shri, re the post in your other thread, i read this as salary support for only certain sectors not across the board?


  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by cookie09:
    @shri, re the post in your other thread, i read this as salary support for only certain sectors not across the board?
    From the PDF released by the govt.

    All employers who have been making Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) contributions for employees are eligible, except those on the exclusion list (employees of the HKSARG, statutory bodies and Government subvented organisations)
    Not sure how this will work for people who own companies and are employed by those companies and pay MPF / draw a nominal salary.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by cookie09:
    @shri, re the post in your other thread, i read this as salary support for only certain sectors not across the board?
    and assuming it's across the board, what do we think an employer has to do now and prove later in order to be eligible? ie last monthly salary taken as reference, or last three months MPF payments, or what?

  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by cookie09:
    and assuming it's across the board, what do we think an employer has to do now and prove later in order to be eligible? ie last monthly salary taken as reference, or last three months MPF payments, or what?
    I expect various departments will be releasing more information on this soon. What we have is a broad outline of the measures. The devil is always in the details. Important thing is, they expect the first round of cash will be delivered by June 2020.

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