Congratulations to Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po for getting the city’s budget to sail through the Legislative Council. It wasn’t always such smooth sailing and Chan would do well to acknowledge as much. When Chan was first given the keys to the city’s coffers, they were full. Successive financial secretaries faced political pressure of a…
Hong Kong’s financial chief has revised the city’s fiscal surplus for the previous year to HK$11 billion (US$1.91 billion), nearly four times the original estimate, saying the ongoing Middle East conflict had a limited impact on the economy with gross domestic product (GDP) growth remaining strong in the first quarter. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po…
In the summer of 1998, the usually placid air at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s headquarters in Citibank Tower suddenly evaporated as regional currencies collapsed like dominoes. Rapacious speculators had shorted currencies such as the Thai baht, the Indonesian rupiah and the Korean won and had profited handsomely. The contagion looked like it would also…
Hong Kong’s de facto central bank left its base rate unchanged after a similar move overnight by the US Federal Reserve, leaving borrowers in the city with a longer wait for funding costs to fall. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced its decision on Thursday morning to keep the city’s base rate at 4…
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) kept its base rate unchanged in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve, after the American central bank said it needed more time and data to monitor the potential inflationary impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. On Thursday, the HKMA maintained its rate at 4.75 per cent, hours after the…