Outdated and opaque administration stops Hong Kong from using land efficiently, think tank says
- Hong Kong Policy Research Institute calls for review of the system, citing fragmented administration and decades-old regulations
The way Hong Kong land is leased, managed and recorded is outdated, opaque and cumbersome, a city think tank has said, calling on officials to review the system.
Fragmented administration and decades-old laws were among problems preventing existing land from being used efficiently, the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute said on Sunday, even as the government hunts for new sources of land such as reclamation and building on golf courses.
“Without an efficient land administration system to effect land policies, land resources may be idle and misused or fall into uses which are illegal or in breach of lease, leading to a failure to release land with development potential in time,” the report read.
The study, conducted by the think tank of former Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, looked at benchmarks set by the World Bank’s annual Doing Business report, which includes a section on land administration quality.
It also referenced parameters from other academic studies such as sustainable development and comprehensiveness of data.
Doreen Kong Yuk-foon, a research fellow at the institute, said the city’s land administration regime did well in international rankings, but was starting to falter on the “latest social needs”, especially on openness and accessibility of data.
“People always ask why we always have to compare Hong Kong with Singapore, but its hard not to, and only after looking at Singapore’s land administration system did we realise how behind Hong Kong’s is,” she said.
On the issue of land records, for instance, Hong Kong still lacked a consolidated platform housing all land and property data in digitised format, unlike Singapore with its Integrated Land Information Service.
While the Land Registry provides information such as transactions and encumbrances, residents have to look elsewhere for a building’s age, floor plans and nearby planning applications, Kong said.
Multiple government bodies were involved in land administration including the planning, buildings and lands departments and the lands offices.
“Each handle something different and they have different types of administration. People who need to check information [from each one] find it cumbersome and bureaucratic,” she added.
Several outdated laws also had to be reviewed or amended to fit the current land situation, she said. Under the Land (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations, for example, fees for a licence to occupy government land are the same as they were in the 1970s.
Since land is so valuable, we should be ensuring that these resources are used more wisely
And the Government Rights (Re-entry and Vesting Remedies) Ordinance, related to government’s authority to re-enter leased land in the event of a breach of lease, has not been reviewed for 20 years.
Tsang, a member of the task force, said the city’s land shortage would not simply disappear if these issues were solved, but they would at least help ensure land was better used.
“We have a consensus on the need to create new land. But since land is so valuable, we should be ensuring that these resources are used more wisely,” he said.
The group called for a comprehensive review of the city’s land administration system.
