Chan Sees Possible Five-Year Growth High. GDP Data Have Not Caught Up

Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan said on Saturday that 2026 could deliver the city’s strongest full-year economic growth in five years. It was a forecast, not a result, and the gap between the phrase and the published numbers is where the real story sits. The top of the government’s 3.5 to 4.5 percent forecast clears the bar on one reading of “five years.” On another, it does not come close.

That ambiguity is worth pinning down before anyone treats the line as a milestone. Speaking on a radio program, Chan said investment momentum from the first half had “carried through into the third quarter,” pointing to exports, visitor numbers, mega events and the coming FinTech Week. “There’s a chance that 2026 will be the strongest full-year economic growth in the past five years,” he said, according to RTHK’s October 31 report. He offered no third-quarter GDP figure, because none has been published.

Which five years Chan means decides everything

Read as the trailing five calendar years, 2022 through 2026, the number to beat is modest. The latest official digest puts Hong Kong’s 2025 growth at 3.6 percent, compared with 2.6 percent in 2024 and 3.2 percent in 2023. On that window, any 2026 outcome above 3.6 percent would be a five-year high, and the government’s forecast range tops out 0.9 percentage point higher at 4.5 percent. In other words, the government does not need an upside surprise for Chan’s claim to come true. It needs growth above 3.6 percent, just above the lower bound of a range it already published.

Read the other way, as the five years through 2025, the bar jumps. That window includes the 2021 rebound of 6.5 percent, a level about two points above the top of the current forecast and nearly double the 2025 result. On that reading, Chan’s “chance” would require growth far beyond anything the government is officially projecting. Chan did not specify which window he meant, and the distinction is not pedantic: one version is within the official forecast, the other requires growth far beyond it. Readers should treat the headline as conditional until the comparison years are named.

The forecast is real; the quarter behind it is not counted yet

The forecast itself is firmly on the record. On August 14 the government raised its full-year 2026 projection to 3.5 to 4.5 percent, up from 2.5 to 3.5 percent, citing a first half that grew 5.1 percent year on year, which it called the strongest half in nearly five years. Real GDP rose 4.3 percent in the second quarter after 5.9 percent in the first, according to the Half-yearly Economic Report. For context, the Census and Statistics Department’s 2026 Annual Digest, released October 29, puts 2025 growth at 3.6 percent, up from its January advance estimate of 3.5 percent. That later vintage is the relevant benchmark.

What is missing is the quarter Chan is leaning on. No advance estimate for the third quarter of 2026 has been released. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s data page, updated October 30, still lists the second quarter as the latest GDP observation. Chan’s “momentum carried into the third quarter” is a verbal read of incoming indicators, not a counted number, and the later GDP estimate may differ.

What would actually move for investors and borrowers

The composition of the growth matters more than the label. The first-half strength was led by external trade, with goods exports surging 28.9 percent in the second quarter on global demand for AI-related electronics. Private consumption, by contrast, rose a far softer 2.8 percent, down from 4.9 percent in the first quarter. That is one powerful engine and one that is already cooling. A strong export-led aggregate can produce an impressive GDP print without households or the property market feeling the same lift, which is exactly the kind of result that flatters a headline while leaving the domestic economy ambivalent.

Chan named the drags himself, and they land on the demand side. He expects interest rates to stay relatively high next year, pressuring the property market and the wider economy, warned that Middle East tensions could push oil prices and inflation higher, and said heavy infrastructure spending ahead would force the government to manage its finances closely, with next year’s relief measures depending on how the economy performs. For a rate-sensitive borrower or property owner, the operative line is “rates stay high,” not “five-year high.” For an equity or IPO investor, the real trigger is narrower still: whether the export strength persists in the next official GDP estimate. Until the third-quarter estimate arrives, the published record holds two counted quarters, a 3.5 to 4.5 percent forecast, and the revised 2025 benchmark of 3.6 percent. The five-year-high label rides on the final number and, just as much, on which five years Chan is counting.