MR CHAN KIN-POR (in Cantonese): President, according to the document, 350 applications involving more than 85 000-plus private car parking spaces have been received so far for the $2 billion subsidy scheme for installing charging facilities in car parks of private housing estates.
President, first of all, I declare that I am the Chairman of the owners’ committee of a large housing estate in Southern District which has also made an application under the subsidy scheme. The keen response to the scheme shows that there is a huge public demand for charging facilities. If the $2 billion-funding of the scheme is not sufficient to meet the demand, may I ask the Secretary how the Government will respond in order to achieve its initial policy intent as far as possible?
SECRETARY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT (in Cantonese): President, I thank Mr CHAN for the supplementary question. The EV-charging at Home Subsidy Scheme has received positive response. Our initial target was to subsidize about 60 000 parking spaces within three years, but after about half a year now, the updated figures show that 370 housing estates have submitted applications involving 88 000 parking spaces. As regards the latest batch of housing estates which have received formal replies, the project has entered the preliminary stage of invitation of tenders. Considering the current number of applications, we noticed that the funding of $2 billion will soon be depleted. Thus, we will speed up the review process. Initially, we planned to conduct a review after three years, but now we hope to review the returned tenders, prices, technical conditions, etc. by the end of this year and then consider, decide and plan the way forward.