Dr Charles YEUNG (Chairman of the 48th, 49th terms of office) March 2016
We hope that the society will cherish our hard-won prosperity and stability and work together to bring our focus back onto economic development and improving people’s livelihood to regain Hong Kong’s positive energy and Lion Rock Spirit in order to open up more space for Hong Kong and our next generation’s development.
Faced with increasing downward pressure on the economy in the new year, the Financial Secretary last month delivered a Budget to help stabilize the economy, promote industrial development and improve the business environment, especially to step up efforts to support emerging industries and SMEs and introduce several tax and fee concessions for business operations. This will not only improve the competitiveness of enterprises, but also lighten the expenditure burden under the current operational difficulties, playing an important role to boost the long-term and stable development of Hong Kong’s overall economy and society.
In the Budget, the Secretary also expressed his concerns about the current social predicament. We are also very concerned about the negative impact of the current filibustering in the Legislative Council and social violence on Hong Kong’s business and investment environments and rule of law. We hope that the society will cherish our hard-won prosperity and stability and work together to bring our focus back onto economic development and improving people’s livelihood to regain Hong Kong’s positive energy and Lion Rock Spirit in order to open up more space for Hong Kong and our next generation’s development.
Broadening industry support to facilitate economic development
The Budget put forward several policy recommendations to promote diversified and innovative industrial development, including launching the “Pilot Technology Voucher Programme”, “Innovation and Technology Venture Fund” and “Corporate Venture Fund”. We believe such measures can stimulate upgrading of traditional industries and boost the development potential of Hong Kong’s innovative and technology industries and start-ups, as well as create diversified development opportunities for our young people. We suggest that the Government should further explore setting up a youth entrepreneurship fund in the form of a matching fund, and strengthen cooperation with the business community to provide additional funding to encourage and support more young entrepreneurs.
In addition, the Budget’s increase in support of tourism, an important pillar industry in Hong Kong, will help deal with the challenges arising from falling tourist numbers and competition from neighbouring regions. We hope that the HKSAR Government will continue to improve the tourism industry, including setting up the Tourism Industry Authority as soon as possible, continuing to develop new attractions, improving the port facilities and enhancing the efficiency of customs clearance in order to further sharpen the competitive edge of Hong Kong’s tourism industry.
We are also pleased to see that the Budget has accepted some of the Chamber’s proposals on supporting SMEs, including extending the application period for the SME Financing Guarantee Scheme and reducing the annual guarantee fee. We hope that the authorities will consider raising the amount of funding, relaxing the application restrictions, simplifying the application procedures and shortening the processing time for the related programmes; and in the long run, exploring unification of the various SME funding schemes to further enhance the operating efficiency of SMEs.
Participating in national construction to capture development opportunities
With the country actively pushing forward its “13th Five-Year Plan” and “One Belt and One Road” strategic plan, it will bring enormous opportunities to Hong Kong. The Budget set forth several positive initiatives, including setting up the Infrastructure Financing Promotion Office to support Hong Kong joining the AIIB as a non-sovereign state. We believe that this will help further capitalise on Hong Kong’s unique strengths in finance and trade to strengthen economic and trade cooperation between the Mainland and the regions along the “One Belt and One Road”.
We believe that Hong Kong can further perform its role as an offshore RMB centre to build an offshore RMB financing platform for the “One Belt and One Road” and a bond trading centre for the projects along it in order to fully capitalise on the financial potential and business opportunities in the region and strengthen Hong Kong’s financial market development. The Chamber will also actively encourage our members and the business community to support the HKSAR Government’s measures to deepen cooperation with the Mainland and the “One Belt and One Road” countries in high value-added areas such as financing, trade, logistics and professional services and further perform Hong Kong’s “super connector” role to strive for greater development space for Hong Kong’s enterprises.
In summary, the Budget has provided a positive role in promoting Hong Kong’s sustained and diversified economic development. We hope the society could actively cooperate with the HKSAR Government to expeditiously implement the various policy recommendations and related financial support measures to inject new impetus for the long-term and stable development of Hong Kong’s economy and society.
