“Is the government still going to have the basic consent among the population to draw up and implement economic policies — tackling the aging issue or getting infrastructure done, for example?” said Andrew Colquhoun, head of Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings in Hong Kong. “That’s still an open question, whether that political constraint becomes more binding for them.”

Mr. Tsang suggested that this might be the case, expressing frustration with the pace of funding approvals from the local legislature, the Legislative Council, also known as LegCo, which features a minority of directly elected members who favor democracy and supported the protests.

“With a number of projects entering their construction peaks, capital works expenditure is expected to maintain at relatively high levels in the next few years,” Mr. Tsang said. “We are, however, concerned about the sluggish progress of deliberation in LegCo since the last session. This has resulted in the mounting of backlog of funding proposals.”

Although outlays for social welfare and education are set to rise, a major target of government spending in the coming year will be large-scale infrastructure projects — expenditures that often benefit the wealthy elite, who control the city’s property developers and construction companies.

Hong Kong is spending billions of dollars on several huge projects that have been subject to significant delays and cost overruns. These include nearly $10 billion on a 50-kilometer, or 31-mile, bridge and tunnel to the cities of Macau and Zhuhai, across the mouth of the Pearl River from Hong Kong; $6 billion on a new cluster of theaters and arts venues; $9 billion on a high-speed rail link to Guangzhou, in southern China; and $14 billion on extensions to the local subway system.

Mr. Tsang said work on a third runway for the Hong Kong International Airport, estimated in 2011 to cost at least $18 billion, could begin next year and finish by 2023, though a final budget has yet to be announced.

Few doubt that Hong Kong’s government can afford the largess. Mr. Tsang estimated the budget surplus for the fiscal year that ends March 31 at 64 billion Hong Kong dollars, up from his estimate of 9 billion dollars a year ago.