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Following is the transcript of remarks today (Tuesday) by the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, after a bilateral meeting with the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mrs Jenny Shipley, ahead of the APEC Economic Leaders meeting:

Q: (Ray Rudowski, TVB): Do you expect the declaration from this APEC conference on a social safety net, as suggested yesterday in a reported speech, and how does the Hong Kong Government see that given its long standing policy of not supporting any sort of welfare structure. How do you see that coming out ...?

Mr Tung: Let me say this to you. Any government, for any government, what we need to do is to care for our people. And the best way to care for our people is to sustain economic growth. If we can maintain and sustain economic growth, we will take care of the people, create wealth for the people. But many countries have been undergoing tremendous restructuring in their economies and, as a result, there are those who have been enormously disadvantaged and to those people we need to be very sympathetic and very, very caring. But as far as Hong Kong is concerned, as I said, since February we have been doing a whole lot of things. And, as you know, the third quarter was a very, very difficult quarter, probably one of the most difficult for us at any time, but we think things are now stabilising in the fourth quarter. But the most important thing is to get the economy going.

Q: This APEC summit has been fraught with a lot of distractions which have soured the summit. How do you think it will affect APEC's work?

Mr Tung: I think there are always a lot of bilateral issues that need to be discussed but we all understand the importance of APEC and let us not forget we have all committed ourselves in the Bogor Declaration for developed nations in 2010 who are going to free up entirely, and for the developing nations 2020. These are very lofty ideals which we will work very hard towards and we remain very much committed to it.

End/Tuesday, November 17, 1998

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Chief Executive's transcript in Kuala Lumpur (Chinese part)