The chairman of Legco’s Finance Committee, Chan Chun-ying, on Thursday said he believes more funding applications can be scrutinised every year now that all lawmakers are patriots, with the average time taken to decide on a government request for money down to less than half an hour.

Chan made the remarks at a press conference to conclude the committee’s work in the past year – the first since Beijing reformed the electoral system.

He said the committee no longer faces any filibustering and has rid itself of tedious sessions.

But he said its efficiency could be further enhanced if officials would improve their scheduling in submitting applications to avoid swamping meetings, and provide more information to lawmakers prior to each session.

“Some of the time, they would like to provide you a very high-level summary of some of the funding proposals instead of giving you all the details. They expect you to ask those details upon the FC meetings instead of providing all the details in one single document so that every member could easily grasp all the details and information before they join the FC meetings,” Chan said.

The committee held 29 meetings over the year and spent an average of 28 minutes scrutinising each funding application.

Up until last Wednesday, the committee had approved 70 items involving a total sum of HK$177.5 billion – including HK$70 billion for the Anti-epidemic Fund.