(Yicai) Feb. 28 -- Hong Kong will remove restrictions on property transactions, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said in his 2024-25 budget speech today, as part of a range of measures to boost the sluggish local economy.

Chan said all property buyers in the special administrative region will be spared from payment of additional stamp duty, buyers stamp duty, and new residency stamp duty from today.

Hong Kong will also build its offshore yuan ecosystem and support the Chinese yuan’s internalization, he said. This will include efforts to develop the Hong Kong-Chinese mainland connect programs, facilitating yuan-denominated cross-border investment and dual-directional circulation, and enhancing offshore yuan liquidity, he noted. 

Financial institutions will also be encouraged to provide more tools to manage offshore yuan products and carry out yuan-denominated financing in Hong Kong, Chan said. 

Hong Kong will develop its Central Moneymarkets Unit into a major international central securities custody platform across Asia to better support yuan-denominated cross-border settlement, trading settlement, and custody, he added. 

Hong Kong is the world's biggest hub for offshore yuan business, handling about three quarters of offshore yuan payment settlements worldwide. It has an offshore deposit fund pool of over CNY1 trillion (USD139 billion), he noted. 

Digital yuan trials will also expand in Hong Kong, Chan said. Local residents will be able to conveniently open e-yuan accounts, further enhancing cross-border payment efficiency and user experience, he said. 

An effort will also be made to encourage more Chinese mainland and overseas pharmaceutical and medical device firms to come to the city for clinical trials by setting up the Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Institute in the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Co-operation Zone this year. 

Hong Kong will also seek support from the National Medical Products Administration for record filing, to help businesses when applying for marketing authorization for their products in the mainland. 

The co-operation zone is the only one that connects Shenzhen and Hong Kong. It covers about 38,900 square kilometers. 

Hong Kong will make rates concessions for local properties for the first quarter of the 2024-25 fiscal year, capped at HKD1,000 (USD128) per rateable property, due to the economic pressures still facing some residents, Chan said. The concession is set to cover 3.1 million residential properties and 430,000 non-residential properties. 

Hong Kong's fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31. 

Editor: Tom Litting