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Following is a transcript of remarks by the Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang, at a media session in Honolulu to round up his visit to the United States today (November 13, Honolulu time):
Reporter: Mr Tsang, tell us what you've been able to achieve during this meeting with leaders in the past few days.
Chief Executive: Well, I have taken the opportunities of the last few days in meeting as many leaders of the APEC members as possible. For instance, I met the Secretary of State and we talked about the waiver of visa requirement for Hong Kong passport holders to enter the United States. We also talked about the possibility of abolition of double taxation for businessmen doing business in Hong Kong and doing business in the United States. These are very useful.
And I also met the New Zealand Deputy Prime Minster, Bill English. We had very useful bilateral talks. It is to update ourselves on the progress of our free trade agreement, which we entered last year, and we also, as you know, have signed a memorandum on education co-operation. All this, I'm sure, will encourage a two-way flow of students.
In addition to that, during our meeting I discussed at some length with the President of Chile. We believed that we should enter into a free trade agreement. The process has started. We hope to be able to sign it sometime early next year. So there are a lot of these activities going on. I'm generally very satisfied with the result so far.
Reporter: Is Hong Kong, as a free economy, possible to join the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) pact independent of China. How would it affect Hong Kong's economic development in the long run?
Chief Executive: Well, Hong Kong as you know is almost a duty free port and we have very low taxation, and we have practically no trade barriers to commodity trade, and it's a free market for that matter. So, from our point of view, I do not see Hong Kong has any difficulty in entering any free trade agreement with any trading partner for that matter. But we have ... in considering acceding to this agreement, we have to be careful that it would not undermine the multilateral trading arrangement to which we are a member and we must make sure it is conducive to regional co-operation too. That's the whole very purpose of APEC. So, provided these requirements are satisfied from our point of view, I'll be happy to enter into any agreement whether it's bilateral or plurilateral.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, November 14, 2011
Issued at HKT 15:36
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