HKU POP SITE releases findings 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. POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly. According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be March 11, 2003, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system will be released.

In the past many years, POP has conducted instant polls on the first one or two days after the head of the government delivered his Policy Address, or after 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.

Last night, we successfully interviewed 1,047 Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. Results show that 12% of the respondents were satisfied with the government's strategy in monetary arrangement, 45% were dissatisfied, 18% said "half-half", while 25% did not give a definite answer. Compared to the results of last year's instant poll, the satisfaction figure has dropped by almost 15 percentage points.

With respect to 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 showed that 20% were satisfied, 50% were dissatisfied and 23% said "half-half". The satisfaction figure has dropped dramatically by 27 percentage points compared to that of last year. It is also the lowest figure across all 6 instant polls on the Budgets delivered by the HKSAR Government since 1997. Because many of the respondents said they had not heard of the Budget during the instant poll, the valid sub-sample of this item was smaller than that for other questions. The sampling error for this question has increased accordingly.

As regards the specific proposals suggested by Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung for "raising revenue", which included increasing the standard rate of tax by 1 percentage point to 16% by stages, increasing the profits tax rate by 1.5 percentage points to 17.5% by stages, increasing the property tax rate by 1 percentage point to 16% by stages, raising the Air Passenger Departure Tax from $80 to $120, and stop freezing government fees and charges, an equal split of 42% was obtained for the respondents who agreed or disagreed with such proposed measures in general.

As for the key measures for "cutting expenditure" proposed by the Financial Secretary, which included reducing the establishment of the civil service by 10%, reducing the social security payment by 11%, as well as a 6% pay-cut for civil servants implemented in different phases, 56% agreed to these measures in general, whereas 31% disagreed.

The Financial Secretary pointed out in his Budget that it would be necessary to raise additional revenue of $20 billion in the coming 4 years, but only measures to raise $14 billion were presented this year. Results of our survey indicated that 22% of the respondents were confident that the government would be able to handle the remaining task of raising another $6 billion properly, 59% were pessimistic.

In terms of Antony Leung's analysis of the economy, 18% agreed with him that it could now be both "the worst and the best of times" for Hong Kong's economy, 65% disagreed. When asked if they thought the government could achieve consolidated and operating balances by 2006/07, only 17 % believed that the government could do so, 62% took the opposite view. When compared to the findings obtained in last year's instant poll, the negative figure rose 24 percentage points dramatically.

On the other hand, 51% of the respondents considered Hong Kong's tax system to be fair, 33% considered it unfair, meaning an increase of 5 percentage points in the negative feeling compared to last year. As for the distribution of wealth in Hong Kong, 19% considered the distribution reasonable, 60% considered it unreasonable, meaning an increase of 8 percentage points in the negative figure compared to last year.

Finally, our instant poll also measured the popularity ratings of the CE, CS and FS in order to depict the effect of the Budget. Results showed that after FS Antony Leung Kam-chung delivered his Second Budget, his rating has recovered 1.7 marks from the historic low of 48.1 marks registered in early March (March 1-4) to become 49.8 marks, still falling below the benchmark of 50. The ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, however, continued to drop to their historic lows of 42.8 and 56.9 marks respectively.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, made the following observations on the latest findings: "Although the Budget has a somewhat positive effect on FS Antony Leung's popularity, it failed to rescue the popularity of CE Tung Chee-hwa. People seem to be generally supportive of the "expenditure-cutting" measures proposed by the Financial Secretary, but their instant opinion is divided on the "revenue-raising" proposals. All in all, their confidence in the government's ability to handle the financial situation is low, and their dissatisfaction is unprecedented since the handover."

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 survey is 1,047 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling errors of the ratings of CE, CS and FS are plus/minus 1.4, 1.0 and 1.2 marks correspondingly, that of other percentages is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points, except for the single question on people's instant satisfaction with the Budget, which is about plus/minus 5 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 further comment on the findings. Shall any person or journalist have any other questions, please email them to us at <[email protected]>. The Director of Public Opinion Programme would answer them as soon as possible. We will keep such an arrangement under constant review, suggestions most welcome. Please note that everything carried in the POP Site does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.