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Information age to fuel Hong Kong's economic growth: SITB

January 27, 2001

Hong Kong's future economic growth will hinge on leveraging the information age and its related activities, according to the Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting, Mrs Carrie Yau.

Speaking at the annual Hong Kong networking dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos tonight (January 26, Davos time), Mrs Yau said that Hong Kong's major new areas of economic growth would be in the telecommunications, IT and multi-media sectors.

"So much has been happening I sometimes find myself dazzled by the speed at which Hong Kong has been able to embrace and exploit new technologies and new ideas," she said.

With the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, Hong Kong now had one of the world's most competitive markets which had taken "service standards to new highs and prices to new lows". In fact, three quarters of Hong Kong's population now had mobile phones, giving the city the highest penetration rate in the world along with Finland.

She stressed that while Hong Kong's Internet business has been riding the same roller coaster as the rest of the world, it had a solid core.

The number of Internet Services Providers, which had complete freedom to start operations, had increased to over 200. There were now about 42,000 'dot-com-cot-hk' domain names registered, and more than 2,000 dot-com companies incorporated. The CyberPort and Science Park were also coming on line that would attract a whole range of IT, innovation, technology and multi-media companies to Hong Kong.

However, Mrs Yau cautioned that Hong Kong faced a number of challenges, including overcoming the skills mismatch in the workforce. This was being addressed by major training and re-training programmes. "In particular, we need imaginative educational initiatives to avoid bottlenecks in the supply of IT talent," she said. We must also ensure high levels of bilingualism in our education system."

On the economic front, Mrs. Yau noted that in the immediate term, Hong Kong was carefully and closely monitoring developments in the US economy following the recent slowdown.

"Notwithstanding all this, Hong Kong really is the best place in Asia to do business," she said.

"This has happened because we have stuck to our tried and tested tenets of success."

These include the rule of law upheld by an independent judiciary; open and accountable government; a clean civil service; a level playing field for business; a duty-free port; low taxes; free movement of goods, capital and people; the free and unfettered flow of news information and ideas; and a whole range of freedoms guaranteed and protected by our constitution, the Basic Law - for example, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, of expression, freedom to travel.

Mrs Yau added: "In a changing world some things don't change."

About 70 leading international bankers, business executives, academics, investment advisers and media representatives attended the dinner. Earlier, Mrs Yau had a meeting with Mr Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman of the leading Indian technology firm, NIIT. The meeting was also attended by Mr Richard Li, Executive Chairman of Pacific Century Cyberworks.

Mr Pawar's company has been a pioneer in developing IT training initiatives and has introduced a number of programmes to provide education in technology skills to a broad spectrum of people ranging from students seeking a career in computers to IT professionals.

The company has now expanded its programmes to the US, Europe and the Asia Pacific. "There is much Hong Kong can learn from these innovative developments," Mrs Yau said. "I am very interested in pursing the question of e-education. We can leverage the state-of-the-art capacity of the CyberPort to become an e-learning hub."

Mrs Yau also met the Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, Mr. Claude Smadja. At the meeting, she welcomed the WEF's decision to hold the 2001 East Asia Economic Summit in Hong Kong from October 29 to 31.

Last night, Mrs Yau was among the heads of state and governments gathered at Davos at a dinner hosted by the Founder and President of the World Economic Forum, Professor Claus Shwab.

Tomorrow (January 27, Davos time) Mrs Yau will be a guest of honour and table host at a special Asian Networking Dinner organised by World Economic Forum which will be attended by some 200 delegates.

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