Speech by Mr K C Kwong, Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting at Software Showcase 98

25 September 1998

Minister Wilson, ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning. Today is the last day of my visit to Canada. In the past few days, I was given the opportunity to meet the key players in the Canadian IT sector, including ITAC, CANARIE, OCRI, and Industry Canada, and to participate in Softworld '98. My colleagues and I are impressed by the development and application of IT in Canada.

In Hong Kong, we are working towards the same goal of promoting the development and wider use of new technologies in the community. For example, the government has just put forward a series of proposals to open up the telecommunications and TV market. Specifically, we are proposing to liberalise our external telecommunications services and facilities markets from 1999 and 2000 respectively, and our pay TV market. We are also proposing to open up the existing cable TV network to enable its full potential for the delivery of multimedia and telecommunication services to be realised.

We believe that the introduction of more competition into the markets will bring about investment opportunities, speed up technology transfer, and stimulate the growth of related industries.

On the IT side, we recognise the considerable potential of electronic business. The government is now actively preparing for the launching of the "Electronic Service Delivery" Scheme, a scheme to deliver public services on-line by the year 2000. In parallel, we will deal with the fundamental issues of security, authentication, payments and regulations which are all essential to the development of electronic commerce. Our objectives are to provide an attractive environment for businesses to do electronic commerce, and to encourage the wider use of electronic transactions by the general public.

We have recently invited the private sector to indicate their interests in participating in our Electronic Service Delivery Scheme. I am happy to note that, among the 44 companies which have expressed an interest, six were from Canadian companies. This clearly illustrates the opportunity for co-operation between Canada and Hong Kong.

But there are more opportunities on the broader IT front. Taking the software sector as an example, a recent survey on Hong Kong's software industry indicates that the software business in Hong Kong will see the largest expansion in the coming years, and that the sector will see a growth of 21% in 1998 despite the economic downturn. The result is encouraging. This encouraging result is, in part, attributable to the fact that, apart from the local market, Hong Kong software vendors are working closely with their counterparts in the Mainland of China in developing application software which can serve the specific needs of the China market.

This leads to a point which may be of interest to you. And that is, Hong Kong can act as a good partner for Canadian companies which want to do business with the Mainland of China. We have managers and IT professionals who have a good understanding of the China market, customer characteristics and business needs. They can help to open the right doors and lay the necessary foundation for business ventures much more quickly than anybody else can. The opportunities are there. What we need are occasions like today's showcase which enable participants to explore the scope for co-operation, to build alliances and to enlarge their business networks.

Here, on behalf of the participants from Hong Kong, I would like to thank the organisers for giving us this valuable business opportunity.

Thank you.

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