HKU POP SITE releases figures on people's instant reactions towards the BudgetBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) an instant survey on people's reactions towards the Budget. Since last month, our POP Site has been releasing the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm, and some annual surveys at other dates, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next two weeks. The POP Site will review and adjust this operation regularly; readers are welcome to leave their comments here.

According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be March 12, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm,　the latest ratings of the Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung will be released. Then, on March 19, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, we will release the latest ratings of the Chief Executive and the top ten political groups, people's satisfaction with the freedom of the press, and the credibility rating of the news media in general.

In the past many years, POP has conducted instant polls immediately after the head of the government delivered his policy address, and the Financial Secretary delivered his budget speech. Such instant polls, which measure people's instant reaction to the policies, would be followed weeks later by our follow-up surveys, which measure people's more matured reaction. We believe this is the correct way to study public opinion on these issues.

According to our instant poll conducted yesterday, 26% of the respondents were satisfied with government's strategy in monetary arrangement, 21% were either dissatisfied, another 21% said "half-half", 31% did not give a definite answer.Compared to the results of last year's instant poll, those satisfied dropped by about twenty percentage points,showing that people are not quite satisfied with the government's fiscal policies. Regarding people's instant reaction to this year's Budget, after excluding those respondents who said they had not heard of the issue, our instant poll shows that the satisfaction figure dropped by ten percentage points compared to that of last year. Our latest figures show that 47% were satisfied, 17% dissatisfied and 23% said "half-half". Compared to the results of similar instant polls conducted in the past since 1997, this year's figures in terms of satisfaction with the Budget speech are quite similar to those registered in 1999.

Regarding specific proposals, among the 1,041 respondents interviewed, 63% agreed to the introduction of a Boundary Facilities Improvement Tax while 27% disagreed. Half considered the increase in the duty rate on wine and cutting the quantities of duty-free tobacco and alcoholic beverages to be sufficient measures to raise government revenue, 36% said it was not sufficient. On the other hand, 47% considered a salary cut of 4.75% for civil servants and staff of all subvented organizations to be reasonable, but 19% considered the cut not enough, 18% said the cut would be "too much". For the six proposed measures to "help the community ride out of the storm", 63% considered the measures adequate, 26% said not adequate. It seems there is general initial support to the salary cut and the relieve measures mentioned.

As regards Antony Leung's analysis of the economy of Hong Kong, 70% agreed with him that "while the medium- and long-term outlook of [Hong Kong's] economy is promising, it will take time for our economy to recover", 15% disagreed. When asked if they thought the government could achieve consolidated and operating balances by 2006/07, only 31% believed that the government could do it, 38% held the opposite view. Regarding Antony Leung's analysis that it is enough for the government to reserve 12 months' expenditure in future, 37% said the amount is "just right", but 36% said it would be "too little". Only 4% said it would still be "too much".

Finally, 55% of the respondents considered Hong Kong's tax system to be fair, 29% considered it unfair. As on the distribution of wealth in Hong Kong, 25% considered the distribution reasonable, 52% considered it unreasonable.

The instant poll released in the POP Site today is a random telephone survey conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of the surveys is 1,041 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of percentage figures is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points, except for the question on people's satisfaction with the Budget, which is about plus/minus 4 percentage points. This is because in that question we have eliminated respondents who said they had not heard of the Budget, hence reducing the effective sub-sample size for that particular question. The meaning of "95% confidence level" is that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Shall anyone have any question regarding the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site, members of the POP Team will be happy to answer them, but we will not be able to provide additional comments. Such an arrangement would be reviewed when more resources are available. Please note that Dr CHUNG Ting-yiu Robert, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is solely responsible for the work published in the POP Site, which does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong.