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The following is issued on behalf of the Business Facilitation Advisory Committee Secretariat:
The Business Facilitation Advisory Committee held its third meeting today (November 9).
The committee noted that the Efficiency Unit of the Chief Secretary for Administration's Office and the Economic Analysis and Business Facilitation Unit of the Financial Secretary's Office had recently co-organised a series of focus group meetings with the entertainment, food business, hotel and club sectors to explore ways to further streamline Hong Kong's licensing system and break down other regulatory barriers to facilitate business.
The committee had a lively discussion and supported the initiatives to set up Business Liaison Groups for more business sectors to facilitate their communication with the Government in resolving problems on regulatory and licensing issues; to establish and publish performance pledges on all licensing activities; to allow applicants to enquire about the status of their applications; to continue promoting a business facilitation culture in the civil service; and to introduce more automation to further speed up the licensing processes. The Government will introduce these measures shortly.
The Food Business Task Force has completed a regulatory review on outside seating accommodation (OSA) for restaurants. The Government will implement eight major recommendations from the review, which will help reduce the processing time of OSA applications significantly. A regulatory review on liquor licensing is in progress.
The Town Planning Task Force has completed its review of the main planning processes and most of its recommendations have been taken on board by the Planning Department. The Town Planning Appeal Board Secretariat will implement a number of measures to shorten the waiting time for town planning appeal cases. The waiting time for a new appeal case will be reduced from 11 months to about six to seven months.
Both the Consultancy Study on Private Certification of Building Submissions and the Consultancy Study to Review the Processing of Lease Modification and Land Exchange Applications are near completion. Their findings and recommendations will be finalised next month.
Papers for the committee meeting will be uploaded onto the internet (www.info.gov.hk/fso/bfac/eng) for access by the public.
Ends/Thursday, November 9, 2006
Issued at HKT 17:57
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