Hand out the cash, fast

You can bet your life that few, if any, will say no to Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po's budget proposal to give every adult permanent resident HK$10,000 in cash.

And no doubt new arrivals to Hong Kong will complain about missing out.

But I can only wish that the blunder surrounding the HK$4,000 cash handouts announced in 2018 will not happen again.

If the government once again takes more than a year to make the HK$10,000 payment - as notoriously happened the last time - it will be a huge political disaster following on the heels of the civil unrest and novel coronavirus outbreak.

After delivering his budget speech, Chan seemed to be confident people will start receiving the cash by the summer. Can he achieve that in light of the "efficiency" surrounding the current administration?

The financial secretary had better come up with the promised goods in good time.

Although I am no fan of cash handouts, Chan has to carry through efficiently with his promise now that a decision has been made to do it.

It's not the first time Chan has come under pressure to give out cash directly, but he proved resistant to this bad idea most of the time despite pressure by political parties from both the opposition and the ruling alliance.

So I hesitate to subscribe to speculation that he was trying to "buy" a way of replacing Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor as chief executive. That's amid political gossip that he has always been one of the probable candidates if the time ever comes for Lam to quit.

Even if he does aspire to climb further up the ladder of power, it is still be too far-fetched to link the HK$10,000 handouts to his political ambition. Could he have made the decision by himself alone given that a huge HK$71 billion in additional expenditure is at stake? Unlikely.

Nonetheless, I am concerned whether recent extra spending to bail Hong Kong out of the ongoing economic doldrums will lead to a structural deficit in the SAR's financial health in the long term.

That's a situation the financial chief must avoid.

Chan is now projecting a budget deficit of almost HK$140 billion for the 2020/21 financial year - the largest since 1997 - on top of a revised deficit of HK$37.8 billion for the current 2019/20 fiscal year.

In total, Hong Kong is bracing for a huge deficit of HK$177 billion over the two years.

While it looks gloomy, the silver lining is that a large majority of the sum involves one-off relief measures successively announced by Lam in recent months and confirmed by Chan yesterday.

If all these one-off spendings and non-recurrent incomes are excluded, there remains a regular deficit of HK$59 billion.

Chan is expecting to restore the balance in five years, which should be fine if he is able to achieve this best case scenario.

Otherwise, he should follow in the footsteps of one of his predecessors, Antony Leung Kam-chung, to adopt fiscal austerity to achieve the long-term objective of financial prudence as required by the Basic Law - even if he eventually succeeds Lam to become chief executive.

In the meantime, let's give him the benefit of the doubt.