Hong Kong leader to take 2,600-US-dollar pay cut

Jun 16, 2009, 5:58 GMT

   Hong Kong - Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang announced Tuesday he will take a pay cut of almost 2,600 US dollars from his monthly salary of 48,000 US dollars to help the city through the economic crisis.

   All senior government officials and 18,000 high-ranking civil servants will also take a 5.38 per cent pay cut while middle and lower-ranking civil servants will have their pay frozen, Tsang said.

   The announcement by Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, one of the world's highest-paid leaders, came as the city endures its biggest economic reverse since the 1998 Asian economic crisis.

   Bureaucrats in the former British colony are as notorious for their high salaries as their vast numbers, and Tsang promised recently to 'share the pain' with ordinary people as the global economic crisis deepened.

   Senior ministers in the city of 7 million are currently paid between 40,000 and 42,500 US dollars a month, lower-ranking officials between 17,000 and 29,000 US dollars and senior civil servants upwards of 6,500 US dollars.

   Announcing the pay cuts Tuesday, Tsang said government officials were 'fully prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Hong Kong to ride out the current difficult times.'

   'Hong Kong's economy has been badly hit by the financial crisis,' he said. 'We understand that everyone has been affected in one way or another; some suffered a pay cut, some had their bonus reduced, and some others even lost their jobs.

Hong Kong's jobless rate has jumped from just above 3 per cent to 5.3 per cent in recent months and the city's economy is projected to contract by more than 9 per cent over the course of 2009.