Academic: Lantau plan financially viable

The government’s new land supply solution, the Lantau Tomorrow Vision development plan, is feasible and financially viable, said Billy Mak Sui-choi, a renowned Hong Kong financial academic.

He rejected criticism that the reclamation plan would exhaust the HK$1.1 trillion of financial reserves as unsubstantiated, sensational and panicking.

Hong Kong is short of all types of land, especially land for housing construction, said Mak, an associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Department of Finance and Decision Sciences, told China Daily. He believes reclamation is one of the viable options to increase the supply of land.

He agreed with the Task Force on Land Supply that a multi-pronged approach should be adopted to increase land supply, with reclamation, resumption of brownfield sites and agricultural land being the preferred options.

“Reclamation is the most important measure to increase land supply in the medium and long term,” Mak said. “It can be done simultaneously with the resumption of brownfield sites but I think reclamation is a bit faster.

“The key difference is that land obtained from reclamation is ‘unplanned land’ that provides more flexible use of the sites, while amended planning of brownfield sites and agricultural sites involve complicated procedures in terms of compensation and resettlement.”

The proposed reclamation project off the east coast of Lantau Island is planned to create a number of artificial islands with a total area of 1,700 hectares.

“Hong Kong is not only short of housing land, knowing there are some 270,000 people waiting for allocation of public housing. It also lacks land for commercial development, office spaces, recreation and government institutions,” Mak said.

“The East Lantau reclamation proposal of 1,700 hectares is not that enormous as it is also necessary to have as much ‘unplanned land’ in the land bank as possible for future development,” he added.

Regarding the cost of reclamation in East Lantau, Mak quoted the estimate by Secretary for Development Michael Wong Wai-lun that it would be about HK$1,300-$1,500 per square feet; so the total cost may be in excess of HK$270 billion.

“If the cost is divided over years, it would only be several tens of billion dollars per year and that is affordable. The reclaimed land is also a type of government asset and will always be there, unlike a highspeed rail or airport that would become useless if they are not utilized,” Mak said.

He suggested development on the reclaimed land take several phases, with the types of developments and value of development in the government’s total control.

“Apart from housing development, with public housing constituting 70 percent of the housing land as suggested, the government can allot land for private housing, offices, shopping malls and hotels, at the same time as cropping revenue from the land auctions,” he said.

Mak also noted that geographically, reclamation in the East Lantau waters is a suitable and logical location.

“The reclaimed land will be flanked by the airport and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge as double gateways. With traffic connections by bridge and rail, the distance to Central district is about 10 kilometers and that is shorter than that from the New Territories to Central,” the academic added.

He also refuted the criticism that reclaimed land would not resist strong typhoons and could be flooded.

He said: “Many new towns in Hong Kong and infrastructure facilities (including the airport and artificial islands of the HZMB) were built on reclaimed sites.”

Reclamation is the most important measure to increase land supply in the medium and long term.” Billy Mak Sui-choi, associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Department of Finance and Decision Sciences