Page 11 - URA Annual Report 2020-21

Striving to fulfil social responsibilities
URA is very much part of Hong Kong. In addition to our main responsibilities of urban renewal, we give back to the community in many various ways. Given the severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s livelihoods, we have provided rent relief to our domestic and commercial tenants, so as to help them through this difficult time and to preserve jobs. So far, the amount of rent relief has exceeded $120 million. As a further initiative to help fight the virus, we have also worked with district organisations to support residents living in cramped environments and poor sanitary conditions in old districts, including efforts to improve the environmental hygiene of common areas and inside the residents’ homes.
Planning for the future
The URA strives to promote urban renewal in a sustainable way. To this end, sound financial planning and flexible resources deployment in line with market conditions are critical.
URA relies on payments from tendered projects to replenish its cash flow for further acquisition of property titles of old buildings of other projects and related construction costs. Only then, future redevelopment projects can be launched in a sustainable manner. In 2020/21, the URA had a fiscal surplus of over $140 million, with about $9 billion of cash in hand. As a number of projects will be put up for tender in the coming year, we estimate that our cash position will increase to about $20 billion by the end of March 2022, which will support our efforts to progress several redevelopment projects and accelerate the pace of urban renewal.
In light of this relatively strong financial position, the URA has formulated its largest ever Corporate Plan for the next five years, which has been approved by the Financial Secretary. This Corporate Plan covers a number of new redevelopment projects under planning which, together with on-going projects carried forward from previous years, will incur a total development cost of more than $100 billion.
Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam, visits and learns about the preservation and revitalisation of the Central Market.
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“The URA strives to promote urban renewal in a sustainable way. To this end, sound financial planning and flexible resources deployment in line with market conditions are critical.”
Chairman’s Statement Managing Director’s Statement Operating Review Corporate Sustainability Management Discussion and Analysis Projects at a Glance Corporate Governance