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Following is the transcript of the stand-up session by the Financial Secretary, Mr Antony Leung, after the first meeting of the Economic Relaunch Strategy Group today (May 10):
Financial Secretary: I will make a few comments in English. The Economic Relaunch Strategy Group met for the first time this morning. We have announced the composition of the strategy group and as you can see from the composition, it comprises representatives from mainly the business community, but it also includes representatives from the academics as well as from the think tanks. We have clearly the relevant Secretaries included as members as well. From the composition I hope you can tell that we want to engage the entire community to help us in establishing a plan to relaunch our economy.
We have a very active dialogue today in the strategy group and a few points came out fairly strongly. Firstly, there was general consensus in today's meeting that the No.1 task of the government right now is to contain the spreading of atypical pneumonia. This is extremely important. This is the No.1 task of the government and the government will spare no effort and resources. I am sure the community also recognises that containment of the spreading of atypical pneumonia is actually the most effective measure in revitalising the economy. And so this is clearly the No.1 task. Secondly, the work of the strategy group right now is to engage in the preparatory work to establish a plan to relaunch the Hong Kong economy when the disease is contained. We recognise the importance to have the plan ready as early as possible. But on the other hand, I would like to reemphasise that we do not have a concrete timetable on the relaunching of the Hong Kong economy because as I said, the No.1 task is to contain the spreading of the disease. Not until we can satisfy ourselves and the international agencies that the disease is contained, we can't really talk about the timetable and we can't talk about relaunching. We can't implement the programme to relaunch the economy.
In the discussion the strategy group clearly recognises and agrees that there are really three phases in this exercise. The first phase is the response phase which is what we are going through right now. It is crisis management. The second phase is reassurance. We have to reassure the local as well as the international community that the disease is being contained and that Hong Kong is a safe and hygienic place and it is still the best place to do business and to visit. This phase is very important. This phase is ahead of what we call the recovery phase. The recovery phase is one that we go out and promote and market Hong Kong. But we believe that if we do not handle the response phase which is right now and the reassurance phase well, the efforts to relaunch and to recover Hong Kong would be made very difficult. And a premature relaunching of the Hong Kong economy and those marketing and promoting efforts would not have the effects if we do not go through and handle the response and reassurance phases well.
Another point is that the strategy group emphasises many many times and the government recognises that the communication is critical in all three phases of the relaunching - in the current phase of response, in the second phase of reassurance and in the third of recovery. We have heard this loud and clear from the strategy group and we recognise that there is room for improvement. And to that extent the government has retained a PR firm to help us. This PR firm has a lot of experience in crisis management around the world. And we hope that the communication can be improved. The strategy group would be meeting regularly and fairly frequently and we hope that as I said we can have the plan as soon as possible but again without a firm timetable.
As I said in the very beginning, we hope that through the strategy group and from the wide spectrum of the community that is represented, we hope to really seek the input and also the engagement from all parts of the community. Besides getting the input through the strategy group, I hope that members of the public can give us their views either through emails (relaunchhk@investhk.gov.hk) or through faxes (3107 9008) or any other means. And I indeed truly want this to be a community-wide effort. Lastly, if I may emphasise and reemphasise that while we recognise the need to have a plan as early as possible, there is no concrete timetable as to when we would so called push the button and get those events out. Right now, the No.1 task of the government is to contain the spreading of the disease. This is an effort that we are not going to loosen up and I hope that members of the community would not loosen up their efforts in fighting the spreading of the disease as well.
Reporter: ......reassuring the people of Hong Kong, what exactly do you intend to do? Will it involve monetary measures, long term measures and short term measures? And now that the number of cases is going down, should we have acted earlier?
Financial Secretary: When I talk about the three phases, the response phase, the reassurance phase as well as the recovery phase, they are not just three phases, they actually overlap with each other. Right now, we are in the response phase but we have to start planning, and sometimes working on the reassurance work already. Even though we haven't started recovery, we have to plan for it, which is what we are doing today. Look at it as kind of three overlapping phases, sometimes with fairly long overlapping periods. I think when you ask the question about how we reassure the public, the most important thing is not so much about Government officials telling Hong Kong people that we are OK. But science must speak - whatever we say must be backed up by scientific evidence and also a lot of this can be delivered by third-party endorsers such as say the World Health Organization, the United States CDC and other experts around the world. This is work that we have to design right now and the strategy group recognizes the importance of this recovery phase and they gave us a lot of very concrete ideas and also we have hired a PR consultant to help us deliver the message.
Reporter: Now that the number of cases has stabilised, how useful is the strategy group? Should it have started much earlier?
Financial Secretary: The strategy group is really to focus on the relaunching of Hong Kong's economy. As I said we haven't reached that stage yet, so right now we are just preparing a plan for the relaunching but we also recognise that before the relaunching events can be implemented we have to manage the reassurance phase. I think it is very much timely and indeed somebody said that we are a bit too early in talking about the relaunch because we haven't reached that date yet. But the Government recognised the importance of having the plan early because when we reach the date we want everything to be ready and we want to do a very good job.
Reporter: What's being done with the international community? Many Hong Kong businessmen are being rejected from attending conventions overeass. Businessmen are not being asked to go there and participate. What's being done for this problem overseas?
Financial Secretary: Right now, this is not a Hong Kong phenomenon, this is a global phenomenon, so that's why the No. 1 task of the Government is to contain the spread of the disease. Now obviously we see a lot of travel restrictions imposed by various organisations around the world. The very important thing is to explain to them that what actually atypical pneumonia is, what is safe and what is not safe. Science must speak and to that extent I notice that the World Health Organisation has also responded to one of the travel restrictions imposed by one of the organisations. The Government is taking a proactive role in explaining what is going on and hopefully the organisations overseas will be doing the appropriate thing.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
End/Saturday, May 10, 2003
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