Following is the transcript of a reply by the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, to a question raised during a media session on his return from Japan last night:

Reporter: Mr Tung, besides from the issue of the hotel charging, what other issues came up during your visit?

Chief Executive: We obviously talked about the hotel charge but I want to assure you that was not the main subject of discussion. I had an opportunity to meet the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister , the Finance Minister as well as the Minister of International Trade and Industry and had an opportunity to meet business and industrial leaders of Japan. I took the opportunity to explain to them how Hong Kong is doing. They all congratulated us how well we are doing and were very delighted that things are going well. Japan is very important to Hong Kong from an economic point of view. We explored ways and discussed means to see whether how this relationship can be further enhanced. It was a very useful visit.