HONG KONG: The Hong Kong government unveiled yesterday a HK$11.8bil emergency economic package to ease the impact of the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, offering loan guarantees and lower rents for hard-hit businesses.
At the equivalent of US$1.5bil, the package is roughly 12 times the size of a package of measures announced by Singapore last week to help its economy ride out the impact of SARS, and amounts to about 1% of Hong Kongs gross domestic product (GDP).