HONG KONG, July 10 (AP) -- The Hong Kong government will start consulting the public on a possible sales tax soon, Financial Secretary Henry Tang said Monday.

The government has pondered introducing a goods and services tax for many years to widen the tax base and ensure a steady revenue stream despite economic fluctuations.

"The economy is showing robust growth now, with inflation mild and unemployment rate continuing to drop," Tang said on government-owned RTHK. "I think it's opportune time we start the discussion."

Tang refused to divulge the level of sales tax the administration hopes to levy on local consumers, noting only that some other countries and regions charge between 5 percent and 25 percent of the value of goods or services in tax. Hong Kong currently has no such sales tax.

Tang said foreign governments increasingly coupled the introduction of a sales tax by slashing other taxes, like salaries tax or stamp duty.

"The world trend is for countries to lower direct taxes to raise their competitiveness," Tang said.

He said Hong Kong doesn't yet have a position on that issue.

A report would be submitted at the end of the nine-month public consultation, which will end in April next year, so any decision would apparently follow Hong Kong's next selection of a leader.

Chief Executive Donald Tsang is widely expected to get a second term starting July 1, 2007.

In his February budget, Tang said the local administration's revenue was unstable and subject to economic fluctuations. Money from land sales, he said, swung between 3 percent and 28 percent of the government's revenue over the past decade.

Also, just over a third of the city's 3.4 million working population now pay salaries tax, with contributions from the top hundred thousand taxpayers amounting to 60 percent of all salaries tax collected.

Tang said the problem of unstable government revenue looked set to worsen as Hong Kong's population ages.

"Government revenue would become even more unstable, as more and more people seek medical and welfare aid from the government, and fewer people pay direct taxes," Tang said.