HONG KONG, Oct. 19 -- Paul Chan, the city's financial secretary, says his government is more optimistic about Hong Kong's growth than the International Monetary Fund is, and the arithmetic behind its own forecast shows what that optimism rests on: a second half that cools sharply from the first.

Chan wrote on Sunday, in a Chinese-language blog post after the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok, that the IMF had raised Hong Kong's 2026 growth forecast to 3.8 percent, "but our view is somewhat more optimistic," in TEH's translation. The post does not say what the earlier IMF figure was.

The government's range, set on August 14, is 3.5 to 4.5 percent, up from 2.5 to 3.5 percent in May. The first half grew 5.1 percent from a year ...