Update (09:04pm) : Just heard from a TV news report that BOC has scraped the idea of the charging the fee after receiving numerous complaints about the fee.
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Bank of China has recently announced they would charge a monthly fee of HKD$60 for any chequing accounts which has an average monthly deposit of less than HKD$5000 in order to cover the ever rising cost to maintain the operation of those accounts.
While it is true that with hardly any deposit interests of any at all, checking accounts get their cost of operation covered but not if the accounts are empty. However, the actual cost of operation is in fact the dealing with the cheques wrote and deposited. IMO, for the sake of costs recovering of these accounts, they should charge on the number of new cheques printed instead. So the more cheques one writes (hense printed) the more it would cost. This way, the poor would not be penalized by having to paid enough to cover the costs of the accounts of the less poor or the rich – those who would just leave exactly HKD$5000 in each and every of their chequing accounts. As for the lack of interests paid in such accounts, bank customers could opt for fund transfer from their savings accounts for any cheque amount wrote.
Currently, BOC only charges new printed cheques on the mailing of the cheques alone, and free of charge if they were picked up. Which means the bank absorbs all the costs of printing new cheques.
WhaUSay?!