Dubious need for more Lantau infrastructure

[DocMartin Williams]

Excellent letter in Sunday Morning Post includes:

Does Hong Kong really need large infrastructure projects on Lantau?

The Lantau Development Advisory Committee has called for comments from the public on plans to develop eastern Lantau and nearby islands into a transport, tourism and economic metropolis housing one million people serving the Pearl River Delta. As an adviser on infrastructure finance in Asia, I suggest the following.

The government should explain why this development is needed. … If it is to accommodate the projected increase of our population to nine million, this will not happen by natural birth rate alone so will be driven by our immigration policy – about which there is no debate in Hong Kong.

…

The government should explain how much this will cost and why the money is better spent on this development rather than on alternative uses such as hospitals or old age pensions at a dignified level. This was the sort of debate that conspicuously did not take place on white elephants such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge.

.. .Relentless development is in Hong Kong‘s DNA but this should not be blind.

Andrew Kinloch, Logie Group Limited

[Author]

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