HONG KONG, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong's expenditure on public healthcare services will increase by 13.3 percent to 71.2 billion (about 9.12 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018-2019, said the financial chief of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government on Wednesday.

Healthcare is an issue of utmost concern to the community in Hong Kong and the healthcare expenditure accounts for 17.5 percent of total recurrent expenditure, said Financial Secretary of the HKSAR government Chan Mo-po when delivering Hong Kong's annual budget.

In the budget, Chan proposed to allocate additional recurrent funding of nearly 6 billion HK dollars to the Hospital Authority (HA), and ensure that the HA has adequate resources to employ all local medical graduates.

Some additional 200 million HK dollars will be allocated to enhance the healthcare professional training, he added.

"To support the second 10-year hospital development plan, improve the clinic facilities in the Department of Health, and upgrade and increase healthcare teaching facilities, I have set aside a sum of 300 billion HK dollars as an initial provision," Chan said.

He said that on a one-off basis, an additional 1,000 HK dollars worth of vouchers would be provided to eligible elderly persons in 2018-2019, which will involve an expenditure of about 796 million HK dollars.

The Colorectal Cancer Screening Program will be extended to cover individuals aged between 50 and 75, involving a total expenditure of 940 million HK dollars over the coming five years, said Chan, who also proposed to establish a 500-million-HK dollar fund to promote the development of Chinese medicine. (1 U.S. dollar = 7.8 HK dollars)