Reviews on regulatory regimes concerning the real estate and construction industry will be completed this year and suggestions to improve the business environment will be made, Financial Secretary Henry Tang says.

Speaking in the Legislative Council today, Mr Tang said the reviews - covering the pre-construction and construction stage of a development process - aim to eliminate outdated and excessive regulations, make recommendations to speed up the project development cycle and reduce compliance cost.

The pre-construction regulatory review mainly covers land and town planning matters, such as simplification of lease conditions and speeding up the lease modifications process.

The review on land matters has ended and recommendations made include reducing the many levels of control details in land leases, and exploring means to enhance the efficiency of both the public and private sectors in the lease modification process. Feasible options for improvement are being identified.

The review on town planning matters will take place in the latter half of this year, and is expected to end by year end.

Six priority areas identified

Regarding the review of the construction stage, a task force under the Provisional Construction Industry Co-ordination Board will study six priority areas this year. They are:

* reducing government involvement in detailed technical issues through private certification of compliance with regulatory requirements;

* aligning key development parameters under the various regulatory provisions;

* delegating regulatory agencies vetting authority to one another to minimise repetitive submissions;

* centralising building plan processing to integrate the checking of related statutory requirements, such as licensing requirements;

* tracking the status of processing building submissions; and

* an overall review of the regulatory framework for the construction stage.

The construction stage review will identify preliminary recommendations for improvement by the end of this year, and will elaborate on the scope and rationale of those recommendations.