Hong Kong seeks HK$78.48m in supplementary funding for three overspending items
Hong Kong's Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury moved the second reading of a bill to approve HK$78.48m in supplementary appropriations for three expenditure items that exceeded their original budget in the 2025-26 financial year. The overspend covers cash-flow needs for MPF system upg
Hong Kong's Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Mr Paul Chan, moved the second reading of the Supplementary Appropriation (2025-2026) Bill in the Legislative Council on 28 October 2026. The bill seeks to regularise HK$78.48 million in additional spending across three expenditure heads that exceeded amounts originally appropriated under the Appropriation Act 2025.
According to the Public Finance Ordinance, any expenditure exceeding the sum allocated to a head of expenditure in a financial year must be included in a supplementary appropriation bill and submitted to the Legislative Council as soon as practicable after the end of the financial year in which the excess occurred.
The 2025-26 financial year has closed, and among the 84 expenditure heads, three recorded overspending. The additional outlay was required to meet extra cash flows for specific commitments, including system optimisation for the Mandatory Provident Fund's first phase of full portability, procurement of hardware and software for the Legislative Council's automatic speech recognition system and large language model, and replacement of a printing-related binding production line.
All three instances of overspending had already received authorisation from the Finance Committee, which granted supplementary appropriations to cover the extra cash-flow needs. The Secretary emphasised that the overspend did not involve cost overruns on the underlying projects.
The bill now seeks the Legislative Council's approval to add the HK$78.48 million in appropriations to the three heads of expenditure, in compliance with Section 9 of the Public Finance Ordinance.
