Our Fellowship Chairman today was PP Gary and our Sergeant-at-Arms was Rtn Jim. Our Sergeant-at-Arms managed to collect $620 between the raffle and fines.

Today President Tobias announced that the RI Convention would be held from 11th to14th of June 2006 at Copenhagen and Malmo. Our Annual Party was held on last Friday at Royal HK Yacht Club, from which collected $1,600 from auction and $1,400 from Raffle. In addition, the President of our sister club (Yokohama Midori), Takeshi Tsuruoka visited us today and donated $6,000 to Leprosy Patient's Project. He also brought us three boxes of Japanese cookies which are the raffle prizes of today.

PP George will organize a community service programme for students of the HK Spastic Association School in Tai Po. The outline is to provide a maximum of 12 kids to fish for two hours on 7th June (Wednesday) morning and conclude the event with a lunch. Thus, we need 12 adults as a minder, hope that our Rotarians can help.

Rtn John meeting the Australian Rotary Club considering a HK$500,000 donation to the water supply connected to our Leprosy Project is finally due to make their decision at their Board Meeting this month (June). 

The speaker of today was Mr. Rod Houng Lee. His topic was Hong Kong Public Finances: "Hong Kong cannot afford to reduce taxes - The myths, the reality and something for the cynics!" Rod is Pricewaterhouse Coopers' Regional Tax Leader as well as being the Head of Tax for Hong Kong and China, while he is also a member of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He was once our Club member. Rod pinpointed the surplus of HKSAR in 2004/2005 is 21.4 billion, and the Financial Secretary estimated that we will have a deficit in this financial year, but until the end of March, we have a 14 billion surplus. The government always under estimates the surplus and over estimate the deficit, Rod proved it with some concrete figures. While the tax base in HK is narrow, the government wants to introduce sales tax. This will, however, make the poor people suffer. Rod said if HK would introduce sales tax, the government perhaps needs to give something out in return. Also, the election of Chief Executive and Legislative Council in 2007 and 2008 will help the government to have an aggressive approach on tax reform.