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The following is the transcript (English portion) of a press stand-up by the Acting Financial Secretary, Mr Stephen Ip at the ground floor lobby of West Wing, Central Government Offices today (November 29).
Reporter: Can you just briefly explain to us your optimism with the statistics?
Mr Ip: My optimism? Ok. I think it is good news that for the third quarter of this year GDP growth was 3.3%, and for the second quarter, it was 0.8%. So we are forecasting a total of 2% for the year 2002. I am talking about GDP growth, of course. As far as the export of goods is concerned, there was an increase of 11.4%, and in respect of the export of services, it's even better. We are talking about 14.1%. In the area of tourism, there was an increase of 22% in terms of number of visitors, compared with the same period last year.
In the month of October, we have a total of 1.58 million visitors of which about 670,000 were from the Mainland. But the good news is that apart from a significant increase of visitors from Mainland China, we have also seen significant increase from other places like the United States and Japan. In the case of Japan, we are talking about an increase of 30%. In the case of USA, an increase of 37%. This is good news. In the case of air cargo, for the last quarter, I think we have seen an increase of 30%.
Because of this significant growth, that is why I think the unemployment rate has also improved, and it has dropped from 7.8% to 7.2% last month. This is good news because the Chinese economy is doing very well, and there is a significant increase in export and, of course, Hong Kong stands to benefit, I think, from this significant growth in export.
Reporter: Mr Ip, can I ask one question in English? How concern are you that despite this growth we are still lagging behind many of our neighboring countries as far as growth rate is concerned?
Mr Ip: Well, I won't agree. I think we are doing quite well but I would leave this to the Government Economist to explain.
(Please also refer to Chinese portion)
End/Friday, November 29, 2002
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