Financial Secretary: HK economy may shrink this year

Tourism affected: Visitors sitting outside a shop on the Main Street at Hong Kong Disneyland. The body-blow of months of political protests on Hong Kong’s tourism is verging on catastrophic for one of the world’s great destinations. — AP

HONG KONG: Hong Kong may report negative growth this year as the economy reels from more than four months of social unrest, Financial Secretary Paul Chan wrote in a blog post yesterday.

It is “impossible to rule out the possibility” that full-year gross domestic product will decline, Chan wrote in the post. “It seems that it is extremely difficult to achieve the forecast of 0 to 1%.”