Hong Kong passes bill to speed up development of Northern Metropolis megaproject

Hong Kong’s legislature has given the green light to legislation aimed at expediting the development of the Northern Metropolis megaproject near the border with mainland China, with the government saying the bill will help achieve targets in the city’s first five-year plan.

Lawmakers completed the third reading of the Northern Metropolis Development Bill and unanimously passed it on Thursday. The bill resumed a second reading on Wednesday, with lawmakers debating it for about eight hours over the two days.

Secretary for Development Bernadette Linn Hon-ho said on Thursday that the Northern Metropolis Development Bill would lay a solid foundation for achieving the vision of the megaproject as laid out in the city’s first five-year plan, which outlines Hong Kong’s socio-economic development between 2026 and 2030 to align with the national blueprint.

“We have explicitly stated in the first five-year plan a binding target of producing 900 hectares of spade-ready land in the Northern Metropolis to facilitate the development of industry, housing and public facilities,” Linn said at the Legislative Council meeting.

“At this critical moment of going all out, the passage of the bill will give us strong confidence to achieve this binding target.”

She also said the passage of the bill would help open a promising chapter for the development of the Northern Metropolis under the first five-year plan, which envisioned the megaproject as a high-quality hub for education, innovation and technology, industry development and talent.

Linn said the Legislative Council managed to pass the bill one-and-a-half months earlier than the government’s initial schedule, demonstrating its contribution to expediting the megaproject and a positive interaction between the executive and legislative branches.

The bill, which applies only to the 30,000-hectare Northern Metropolis, focuses on streamlining town planning procedures, expediting land resumption compensation payments, accelerating construction work and easing cross-border flows of people, goods, data and capital.

It also states provisions for statutory corporations and empowers the Chief Executive in Council to create subsidiary legislation for future measures.

The government plans to table subsidiary legislation in stages, with the first stage including measures to ease immigration procedures at the cross-border innovation and technology park in the Lok Ma Chau Loop.

Subsidiary legislation handling other cross-border flow elements will be dealt with in subsequent stages.

Election committee lawmaker Maggie Chan Man-ki said she hoped the government would establish subsidiary legislation regulating cross-border data flow as soon as possible, given that innovation and technology was the megaproject’s key focus.

She added that Hong Kong had to define important data and introduce a mechanism to protect information classified into different tiers to align with standards and practices in mainland China.

Chan stressed that such an arrangement should be stipulated under the law, rather than stated in a guideline, to boost deterrence.

Fellow election committee legislator Andrew Lam Siu-lo acknowledged the government’s efforts to expedite the megaproject, but warned that departments and bureaus should work together to prevent development projects from being held up by individual approval procedures.

He urged the government to publish its operational guidelines, deal with project applications through a single platform, and set out approval timelines and key performance indicators.

Lawmaker Webster Ng Kam-wah, representing the accountancy sector, suggested that the government provide details on the arrangements for disclosing the financial status of statutory corporations, as well as on the administration’s potential commitments for such companies.

He noted that tax incentives to attract leading enterprises to set up operations there would be dealt with in a separate ordinance and urged the government to table proposals as soon as possible.

The relevant bill committee earlier scrutinised the bill for about 30 hours between July and October.

Beijing has tasked Hong Kong with expediting the development of the Northern Metropolis – envisioned as a new economic engine and housing hub – in the national five-year plan.