Hong Kong finance secretary warns of looming ‘economic typhoon’

The Hong Kong government has adopted a $2.4 billion spending package to try to buoy the economy, a move that financial secretary Paul Chan likened to the food stockpiles that households gather to gird themselves against a typhoon.

Protest-battered Hong Kong should also brace itself for an “economic typhoon” caused by the U.S.-China trade war and recent political unrest in the city, Financial Secretary Paul Chan wrote in a blog post Sunday.

The warning from financial secretary Paul Chan came after Hong Kong slashed its 2019 growth forecast to as little as zero, down from a previous range of 2% to 3%. (Reuters Photo)

The warning from the city’s top budget official came after Hong Kong last week slashed its 2019 growth forecast to as little as zero, down from a previous range of 2% to 3%. The government also adopted a $2.4 billion spending package to try to buoy the economy -- a move that Chan likened to the food stockpiles that households gather to gird themselves against a typhoon.

Two months of protests that have shut the airport, blocked streets and sent stocks sliding have hit the local economy at a time when the U.S.-China trade war was already chipping away at exports, Chan wrote.

Chan called the economic storm a level-3 danger, invoking the terminology that the Hong Kong observatory uses to issue storm warnings. A level-8 basically shuts the city down.