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Following is the transcript of a media session given by the Financial Secretary, Mr Antony Leung, after a meeting of the Economic Relaunch Strategy Group at the West Wing lobby, Central Government Offices this (June 6) evening:
Financial Secretary: The economic relaunch strategy group welcomes the decision of the CDC to lift the travel advisory on Hong Kong. This reflects the effort of the entire community, particularly the medical and health workers. But we will remain vigilant in containing the spreading of SARS and we will take measures to enable people, both overseas and locally, to recognise that Hong Kong will be a even cleaner and safer place. The strategy group talked about the strategy and we have reviewed quite a number of initiatives and the strategy really surrounds three areas. The first area is to rebuild the confidence of Hong Kong. Clearly the most important effort is to contain the spreading of the disease and we have taken a lot of initiatives to promote and communicate the message that Hong Kong is now a safe place to visit, and going forward to communicate that Hong Kong is worth a visit. We have advertised internationally after the lifting of the travel advisory by the WHO. Now that the CDC has lifted its travel advisory, we are going to advertise in North America. There will be initiatives working with the citizens in Hong Kong, working with the various chambers to deliver this message very effectively, again to build confidence in Hong Kong. The second area is to boost the local consumption. You have seen a lot of activities organised by the private sector, coordinated by the Government and promoted by the Government, including initiatives such as We Love Hong Kong Phase I, and we have just announced a Phase II. There have been a lot of activities organised by the Home Affairs Bureau, the local community economies, and we have seen results. The activities in Sham Shui Po, the Computer Festival - I understand that the results, the sales have increased by 50% from last year. And there will be a whole series of those activities that will be introduced soon. The third area is to attract overseas businessmen, overseas investors and overseas tourists to come back to Hong Kong and there we have a whole host of activities. We will announce the details as and when we introduce them, and also the various Secretaries will be introducing them at the various panels at the Legislative Council shortly. So you see that in a very short period of time we have a lot of activities coming out along these three areas. Again I would like to thank the community for proposing a lot of these activities as well as organising them. We continue to welcome their advice and will continue to work with them to ensure that through these activities the confidence in Hong Kong will be regained, the domestic consumption will be increased as well the overseas businessmen, the overseas investors as well as tourists will come back to Hong Kong.
Reporter: Mr Leung, how long do you think that it will take to see the impact or the result of the approach that you have just mentioned? And secondly, have you actually held talks with the various Chambers of Commerce and how do they response to that?
Financial Secretary: Thank you. I believe that we are seeing the result already through the initiatives that we have taken in boosting domestic consumption. If you look at the statistics given to us and if we look at the survey result conducted by our own Census and Statistics Department, we are seeing that the domestic consumption is steadily on the rise and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence as well. A lot of people are telling me that some restaurants, you can see the queues in front of the restaurants again. So we are seeing the results already. Obviously the initiatives and the events that we are going to organise will further boost the domestic consumption. I am quite confidence that you will see the result in a very short period of time.
In terms of the business travelers, a lot of them have been coming back to Hong Kong. So we are seeing more and more businessmen visiting the Government. I am seeing a number of them. Also if we look at the hotel occupancy rates, they have been on the rise. So we are seeing the result already. We are working with the various business chambers in the strategy group, we have the representatives from the major chambers represented, clearly from the domestic chamber, the general chamber, the Chinese chamber .As well as from the British, the American, Japanese, as well as the European chamber. So we are working very closely with our business friends, both domestically and overseas to ensure that our message will get across.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
End/Friday, June 6, 2003
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