What were the interesting developments on labor in the 2015 Policy Address?

A talent list is being planned.

In the recently concluded 2015 Policy Address, it has been noted that there were few surprises, with the Government again emphasizing that housing “is the most critical of all livelihood issues in Hong Kong” and reiterating its commitment and confidence in solving the supply-demand imbalance.

According to a research note from Barclays, while the Government spent a considerable 47 paragraphs on housing and land, Barclays has found the initiatives under the labour section more interesting.

Barclays noted that these include: Encourage the extension of the retirement age – The Government has decided to extend the retirement age of civil servants and will encourage other employers to do the same.

Also, the change to immigration policy to attract overseas talent – The Capital Investment Entrant Scheme (i.e. investor immigrant scheme) will be suspended from tomorrow (15 January 2015) onwards.

Here's more from Barclays:

Rather than focusing on wealth, the Government appears to be focusing on skills and talent. It plans to relax the stay arrangement under the General Employment Policy, the Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professional and the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme.

It also plans to draw up a talent list to more effectively attract the right talent to Hong Kong and implement a pilot scheme to attract overseas second generation Chinese Hong Kong permanent residents to come back to Hong Kong.

On the suspension of the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, we do not believe this should have a big impact on the property market as real estate had already been removed from the approved list of investment in October 2010.

On the housing side, we believe the key message is one of working together to increase public housing supply. In addition to the Housing Authority, Housing Society, the Urban Renewal Authority and the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation, the Government wants to leverage the private sector’s capacity to increase the supply of subsidized sale flats.

As for some of the new housing and land initiatives, today’s Policy Address did not provide much additional detail beyond what had already been flagged by the local press over the past week.

While the Government announced that it would launch a pilot scheme to identify public rental housing flats to be sold to Green Form applicants at a price lower than those of HOS flats, no figures around the scale and timing were released. On the potential use of “brownfield sites”, there were also few details on the potential timing.