In delivering his parting-shot budget on Wednesday, our Financial Secretary John Tsang finally got wiser from his last year’s budgetary fiasco to focus his budget sweeteners on the middle class and small businesses. Instead of giving universal cash handouts to every adult citizen of Hong Kong that only earned him a “Thanks, but no thanks”, this time he proposed a range of relief measures in the form of tax breaks and rebates for taxpayers and the city’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

It can be said that the HK$80-billion worth of farewell gifts lavished by Tsang are mainly geared up to relieve the financial burden of the middle class and SMEs in the face of the expected adversity from the economic crisis in Europe. They include a universal 75 percent tax rebate for both profits tax and salaries tax capped at HK$12,000, increases in various tax allowances such as the basic salaries tax allowance, a waiver of rates, and extension of the tax reduction period for home loan interest to 15 years of assessment from the present 10 years.

It is unarguable that Tsang, who is the most generous financial secretary since the handover, has finally taken a step in the right direction and made some sense of the art of giving by delivering a prudent budget which balances the interests of different classes in society. With the government sitting on bulging financial surpluses of over HK$66 billion, the crux of the matter for our financial secretary is always about how to give and to whom. Why was a universal cash handout to every citizen in the city not right? Simply because it smacks of unfairness for not putting public money into good use as even overseas immigrants and the superrich were also entitled to the sweeteners while the poor kids were excluded in the giveaway. The government should save for a rainy day and should refrain from frivolously lavishing money on those who don’t need it.

For the middle class who have often complained about being left out in the cold in the past budgets, the time has come for them to claim their fair share. After all, they had endured years of hardships and austerity measures when the economy was bad and had always been at the forefront of contributing to the public coffers. In good times they have been left on their own to battle against the soaring inflationary pressures and staggering property prices with their hard-earned money spent on the poor and needy. Shouldn’t it be the time for the government to regard their past contributions and return wealth to this diligent class of people, as well as SMEs, who are the main economic drivers of society? The shift in budgetary focus towards them will also help ease the intensifying underlying conflicts and antagonism between the middle class and the underprivileged including the new migrants.

Undoubtedly, some people, especially the poor and underprivileged, are bound to be whining about how they are being neglected in this bigger picture of the relief package. However, it would be unfair to say their needs are not being taken care of. After all, there are a host of relief measures to cater to their needs, including HK$1,800 worth of free electricity for each household, double pay for dole, old age allowance and disability allowance recipients respectively, a two-month waiver of public housing rents as well as an injection of HK$100 million into food banks. The injection of HK$10 billion into the Samaritan Fund and the relaxation of its means test requirement will also benefit more patients to obtain drug subsidies.

In view of what Tsang described as a “difficult and thorny year” because of the unpredictable and bleak economic outlooks in Europe and the US, it is a welcome move that the financial secretary has proposed a series of measures to help SMEs and to encourage investments, especially enhancing the existing SME Financing Guarantee Scheme with a 80 percent loan guarantee from the government and a lower guarantee fee. All these measures will help SMEs ride out any storm caused by the economic tumult in Europe and the US. Tsang has also taken the right approach in increasing retraining and vocational places and proposing to set up an International Cuisine College to boost local employment.

All the more, Tsang finally kick-started the long-awaited re-development projects of Kwong Wah Hospital and Queen Mary Hospital, which are badly needed to ease the city’s overstrained medical services caused by the influx of mainland patients and aging population. The budget boost to increase recurrent expenditure on healthcare by 8 percent to HK$45 billion for more services, facilities and medical staff, is therefore welcomed.

However, Tsang’s critics might still pick on the fact that his budget fails to cater to the long-term planning of the city’s economic development, especially the six privileged industries, and to tackle the enduring problem of a narrow tax base, poverty and the aging population. But with only a few months left to run in his term of office, it would be better to leave it to the next government to handle instead of paying lip service to the impractical.

The author is a current affairs commentator.