Legislative Council
LC Paper No.CB(2)415/12-13(04)
Ref : CB2/PL/FE
Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene
Updated background brief prepared by the Legislative Council Secretariat for the meeting on 8 January 2013
The business environment of public market stalls, including the rental adjustment mech anism and air-conditioning charges
Purpose
This paper summarizes the concerns of the members of the Panel on Food
Safety and Environmental Hygiene ("the
Panel") on the business environment of public market stalls, including rentals, air-conditioning charges and recovery of rates in public markets.
Background
Management of public markets
2.
Public markets were provided by th e former Urban Council ("UC") and
Regional Council ("RC") to meet the needs of the community and resite hawkers who would otherwise be trading on-str eet causing environmental nuisance and congestion to pedestrian and vehicular tra ffic. Since the dissolution of the then
Provisional UC and Provisional RC on 1 January 2000, the Food and
Environmental Hygiene Department ("FE
HD") has taken over the responsibility for managing public markets.
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3.
At present, FEHD is responsible for managing 77 public markets and
25 free-standing cooked food markets, pr oviding a total of some 14 450 stalls.
The overall occupancy rate is about 89%.
4.
Although FEHD has taken over the re sponsibility of the management of public markets in 2000, it has continue d to adopt the versions of tenancy agreements used by the former UC and RC despite their considerable discrepancies. This succe ssive extension of old tenancies has been criticized by the Audit Commission as well as the
Public Accounts Committee ("PAC") of the Legislative Council ("Le gCo"). In response to the views of the Audit
Commission and PAC, FEHD agreed to review and align the different public market tenancy agreements, market rental adjustment mechanisms and arrangements for the