The museums or Xiqu Center in the West Kowloon Cultural District may need a few more closing days to save costs if the government doesn’t greenlight a proposal to revamp its finances, said the board’s chairman Henry Tang Ying-yen.
Speaking on a radio program on Saturday, Tang said according to his understanding the government has completed an independent report to assess the district’s finances but the board has yet to receive an official reply.
If the response comes any later, the board will have to make some big operational changes like closing the museums for a few more days in order to save costs, he said, asking if this is fair to the public.
The concern for the board continues to grow since the HK$21.6 billion funding allocated by the Legislative Council in 2008 is set to be exhausted next March. Therefore the board last year submitted the proposal and suggested allowing the sale of residential property rights.
Tang said the remaining funding is from short-term loans and if the proposal is banned by the authorities, the board may face loan calls from the banks.
The funding is sufficient in keeping the district alive for about a year and Tang hopes this crisis can be handled without using public funding.
Tang recalled he had forecast that the capital chain would break the first day he took the helm as the board chairman and pointed out that the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the M+ Museum have logged around 2.4 million and 5 million visitors, respectively, since opening.
He also said he doesn’t want the operations to come to a sudden halt when the museums are performing this well, adding the board will fully cooperate with the government.
He also noted that the district’s subpar performance also, to a certain extent, affects the goal of developing Hong Kong into an exchange center of Chinese and Western arts and cultures, laid out in the 14th Five-Year Plan of China.
Hong Kong United Times丨香港聯合時報丨HKUT 