Many politicians and commentators in Hong Kong have predicted that Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah's budget speech on Feb 25 is going to be deadly dull.

Indeed, few Hong Kong people are expecting the circumspect Mr Tsang to unveil any multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus program, or to win political brownies with generous handouts even at a time when our external-oriented economy is under the severest stress since the global stagflation in the mid-1970s.

But in these trying times, and under the special circumstances of Hong Kong, doing less may well be a wiser choice for the government than going out of its way to meddle with the adjustment process, painful as it may be, of our free-market economy. This is in keeping with the Hong Kong government's professed economic policy of "small government, big market".