[kabelshik]

Hong Kong’s economy may shrink this quarter if exports fail to improve amid faltering global growth, Financial Secretary John Tsang said.

“I see a difficult year ahead for the global economy,” Tsang said in a transcript of a radio broadcast, posted on a government website yesterday. “We may even see negative growth in the first quarter of this year if exports fail to pick up.”

Tsang pledged an HK$80 billion ($10.3 billion) boost to growth in the fiscal year starting in April, with measures including tax rebates, waivers on homeowner taxes and aid for small businesses. Gross domestic product may rise between 1 percent and 3 percent in 2012, down from 5 percent last year, the government estimates.

The financial secretary didn’t specify whether any contraction would be year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter. The economy grew 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months.

The benchmark Hang Seng Index rose 0.3 percent as of 10:47 a.m. local time after Greek lawmakers approved austerity measures to secure a bailout.

In a sign of the toll that weakness in global demand is taking on Asian economies, Japan today reported an annualized 2.3 percent contraction in the fourth quarter on export declines and disruption from floods in Thailand. China’s trade fell for the first time in two years in January, partly because of the disruption of a weeklong Lunar New Year holiday, the government said last week.