NWD to offer 3m sq ft of farmland for public use

Hong Kong property giant New World Development said on Wednesday it would donate three million-square-feet of farmland to help ease housing problems in Hong Kong.

NWD is the first of the city's property developers to donate land to public after Hong Kong policy makers appealed to the government to invoke the Lands Resumption Ordinance to alleviate the city's housing shortage.

The developer plans to give farmland to the government for public housing and relevant facilities, social enterprises and other charities to develop social housing, NWD's general manager and executive vice-chairman Adrian Cheng Chi-Kong told the company's annual results meeting.

In the first stage, NWD will cooperate with social housing enterprise Light Be by providing about 28,000 square feet land next to the MTR station at Tin Shui Wai. This is so the enterprise can develop a social housing community.

Expected to be completed in 2022, the project aims to help low-income families with children by offering over 100 apartments with the rents far lower than market rates. They will also provide entertainment facilities for children and local stores with the housing, according to Cheng.

Cheng noted that the group is responsible to different stakeholders and will be taking on more social responsibilities. Cooperating with Light Be will mean they can find ways to tackle the city's housing issues, Cheng added.

The company had discussed these plans with Light Be for more than a year. NWD plans to give 1 million square feet of land to Light Be to develop affordable housing if necessary; the remaining 2 million square feet of land will be donated to the government and other social enterprises.

As of June 30, the group had a landbank with an attributable total gross floor area of approximately 9.1 million square feet in Hong Kong. This is available for immediate development. Of this, approximately 4.2 million square feet is for property development. The group also has an agricultural land bank of about 16.9 million square feet in the New Territories for land use conversion.

In the full year ending June, NWD recorded a HK$18.16 billion profit, a drop of 22.19 percent from a year earlier. Its final dividend was 37 cents per share.

Looking ahead, the company is preparing other initiatives — including a residential project with more than 3,000 units at Tai Wai MTR station and a Shenzhen Prince Bay project with about 110,000 square meters which will increase its property sales.