A woman wearing a face mask and holding an umbrella crosses a street in the rain in Hong Kong, June 6, 2020. (ISAAC LAWRENCE / AFP)

HONG KONG - Registration for Hong Kong’s HK$10,000 cash subsidy for permanent residents will begin on June 21, and disbursal to individuals will begin as early as July 8, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Monday. 

The government accelerated the timetable for distributing the subsidy, proposed in the 2020-21 Financial Budget in February, in order to kick-start an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic. About HK$70 billion will be distributed under the plan, which applies to Hong Kong permanent residents who are at least 18 years old.

Registration, which runs until the end of next year, can be done online or by paper. Payment processing will take about a week for electronic applications submitted from July 1. Paper applications will take about two weeks to process, Chan said. 

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The government slashed administrative costs of the plan by about half to HK$500 million, Chan said, adding that filing electronically will speed payments to residents and further reduce costs.

To register through online banking, residents can enter the first four characters of their Hong Kong identification card, and the bank will validate the applicant’s information with their original database, Chan said.

He said the process has gone through two rounds of testing to make sure the data are well-protected and the procedures are convenient and efficient. The HKSAR is working with 21 banks to provide the online registration platform. 

The SAR government has also rolled out two other rounds of pandemic-relief programs totaling more than HK$280 billion including tax exemptions and other relief funds for different industries, Chan said.

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