Coefficients for land premium calculations to be updated

Land premiums shall see their coefficients for calculations amended in a later Chief Executive Dispatch, André Cheong, spokesperson of the Executive Council (ExCo), announced to a press conference over the weekend.

Cheong is also the Secretary for Administration and Justice.

According to Cheong, the Executive Regulations governing the matter have been in use for many years, which is the basis for this amendment.

He underlined that the government has taken into account the latest data on real property prices and number of transactions.

This amendment also sees new categories for five-star deluxe hotels and budget accommodation, as well as the elimination of the tourism complex and apartment categories.

Construction costs and values as stipulated in Tables 1, 3 and 8, as well as the data in Appendices 1 and 3 of the current Executive Regulations, will be republicized in a following Chief Executive Dispatch.

Categorizations concerning the rating of public streets will also be adjusted.

At the press conference, Director Lai Weng Leong of Land and Urban Construction Bureau (DSSCU) assured the public that the equation that calculates land premiums has not been changed, but the coefficients.

He revealed that the new versus the old coefficients equate to a manifold change for commercial buildings, 30% for residential buildings and 10 to 20-fold for parking lots, among other levels for other types of real properties.

Lai added that pursuant to law, land premiums should be reviewed every two years, but that no changes have been made in the past few years.

When asked whether this amendment would affect the pricing of future economic and sandwich-class housing units, the director said no decision had been made in this respect. While on the topic of pricing of future land plots for auction, he said market data would be acquired for evaluation. However, the law states that reserve prices cannot be lower than the concerned land premiums.

More registration procedures to be digitized

The ExCo has also concluded its discussions on the amendments of two laws that will affect procedures for births, deaths, marriages, divorces, name changes and car ownership registrations, with most of them seeing future digitization.

In the Civil Registration Code Amendment Bill, the government proposed that the entire procedure for birth or death registrations be digitized. To facilitate this, the future law will construct database connections between hospitals and the Civil Registry. In the future, people will obtain registrations online.

Digitizing the procedure for the registration of marriages has also been proposed. In the future, couples may only need to be present at the Civil Registry once – on their wedding day – to facilitate their marriage registration.

It is also proposed that the location for marriage registration be expanded to places other than the Civil Registry. This has been in practice in Hong Kong for many years and has caused the wedding and event industry there to thrive.

The bill also proposes that divorce by mutual consent for couples with children under the age of majority be handled by the Civil Registry, so as to ease pressure for the courts. To protect the interests of the children, it was proposed that the Public Prosecutions Office be given a role to intervene if the divorce agreement jeopardizes the interests of the children.

Name changing is suggested to go under the authority of the civil registrar.

In the Vehicle Registration System Amendment Bill, it was proposed that registrations for new and used car ownerships as well as license plate application changes be digitized. Consequently, the Vehicle Ownership Certificate will be dropped.

Changes to Civil Servant pension and provident funds

The ExCo has also approved certain changes to the structure of the civil servant Pension Fund. It will be supervised by the Secretary for Administration and Justice, rather than the Chief Executive.

The fund’s workforce will also be adjusted.

Meanwhile, civil servants will be allowed to allocate their provident fund investment ratios to each percentage point.

The latter change will take effect on Jun. 13.