Aging society is no joke

After Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying delivered his first Policy Address last month, public attention has shifted to the 2013-14 Budget Plan to be presented later this month. The upcoming fiscal budget is critically important because the ideas, principles and policy measures spelled out in the Policy Address cannot be implemented without government funding, which requires Legislative Council approval.

Financial Secretary John Tsang shared some thoughts on the Budget Plan in his latest blog entry on Sunday, amid growing expectations for cash handouts following the disclosure that the government boasts HK$40 billion in budget surplus and HK$700 billion in financial reserves. The financial secretary mentioned in his blog a recent gaffe by Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso. Aso had urged Japan's elderly people to "hurry up and die" in a recent speech highlighting the growing healthcare cost of the nation's aging population. The rhetorical blunder immediately made Aso a target of public furor at home and the butt of jokes around the world.

Hong Kong has the same pressing issue and Financial Secretary John Tsang knows it only too well, which is why he finds his Japanese counterpart's frustration not so funny after all. His concern about the aging population is apparently valid, as the Census and Statistics Department predicts the life expectancy of the city's male population to increase from 80.5 years in 2011 to 84.4 in 2041, and life expectancy of the female population would likewise rise from 86.7 to 90.8. In three decades' time, people aged 65 and older will account for 30 percent of the total population, compared with 13 percent in 2011.

There is no indication that our finance secretary condones Aso's tactlessness. But we have every reason to believe Hong Kong's public finances are under similar fast-growing pressure from costly health care programs for the aging population. That is reason enough for the government to do its best to prevent Hong Kong from falling into the same fiscal sinkhole Japan and so many other developed Western economies now find themselves in.

This is an excerpted translation of a Ta Kung Pao editorial published on Feb 4.

(HK Edition 02/05/2013 page1)