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The following is the transcript of the media session given by the Financial Secretary, Mr Antony Leung, after attending a reception hosted by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London today (June 25, 2001, London time):

Financial Secretary: Thanks for coming here to join us at the reception. Today we have met quite a lot of people. We met the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We also met the Governor of the Bank of England. We met the Chairman of the Financial Service Authority. The Lord Mayor of London hosted lunch for us.... We have also a great news, which you may have heard, that Fitch international ranking agency have upgraded our credit rating in long term foreign currency from A+ to AA-. So, it's a very welcoming present for my trip to London. Today, we have a very fruitful day and just now you have seen, we launch the Brand Hong Kong, so we have a very good start and we hope the rest of our trip will be just as productive and beneficial.

Reporter: ...What were the kind of questions that were asked of you in relation to Hong Kong?...

Financial Secretary: The one question that comes up is what are my priorities. Since I'm new to the job, my primary thought is to help Hong Kong restructure and move up the value chain. In the meantime provide opportunity for everybody in Hong Kong. It is my foremost priority to help Hong Kong restructure and move up the value chain. And in so doing, there are five areas that I'm spending a lot of my time.

The first one is enhancing Hong Kong as a financial centre. The second is developing Hong Kong further as ... logistic centre and for e-commerce. The third area is to enhance Hong Kong as a tourist centre. The fourth area is promoting further co-operation between the economy of Hong Kong and that of the Mainland, particularly, the Pearl River Delta. The fifth area is promoting efficiency within the government. So, we discussed these priorities and they offered me a lot of advice for which I was very grateful.

Reporter: What kind of advices?

Financial Secretary: Obviously, to compare how the other government have done in improving efficiency and these are all very good advices. The Governor of Bank of England and the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority offered advice of how to manage the...

Reporter: Tomorrow you will be meeting the Chancellor of Exchequer... Is there anything you think you might be able to learn from him?

Financial Secretary: I'm sure I have lots of areas to learn from him. After all, I think he is a very experienced policy maker... This is my first meeting with him and I look forward to really knowing him and starting a long and close relationship with him.

(Please also refer to the Chinese part of the transcript)

End/Tuesday, June 26, 2001

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