Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Mr Gregory So, at a media session on cinema development and the Food Truck Pilot Scheme after attending the launch ceremony of Entertainment Expo Hong Kong 2017 today (March 13):

Reporter: Mr So, what is the reason behind carrying out these new measures (to facilitate cinema development in Hong Kong) and also ...?

Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development: As you know, the HKSAR Government is really supportive of the development of cinemas as well as the movie industry. We believe one of the strategies is to provide more cinemas, particularly more screens, so that there will be more chances for our citizens to be able to enjoy going to cinema. In our survey, location is very important. So we want to be able to provide a very accessible place for our citizens to be able to enjoy going to cinema. Cinema-going experience is very different from just staying at home and watching movies on the television screen. It is also conducive to development of the movie industry.

     In identifying the suitable lands for the development, we believe that it will be more synergetic if we could find places where there is, for example, restaurant and café, together with, like, shopping facilities. That would be more conducive to drawing a crowd to the cinemas. So there will be more in the new development areas that would allow this to happen. In our preliminary review, we have identified two pieces of land, one in the Kai Tak area and the other in the New Territories, the Sha Tin area.

     We still have to go through a lot of studies. If everything goes smoothly, these lands will be available for sale in a few years' time. Depending on the development of these two pieces of land, we might be having more of this sort of provision of these terms in the land sales (conditions) in the development of new area so that our citizens will have more access to cinemas.

Reporter: Mr So, regarding the Food Truck Pilot Scheme, there is an operator that has quit the scheme. Do you think there is any problem here and will you have an evaluation on the regulations of the scheme?

Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development: As I said, this is a pilot scheme, we encourage the operators to be innovative. I note that one operator has decided before commencement of operation to discontinue participation in this scheme. We will commence our procedure to go to the next-in-line according to the results of the Cook-off Challenge and invite them to participate in this scheme. So this is what we originally anticipated, when people would like to opt out, we would let people on the waiting list to go in.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Monday, March 13, 2017
Issued at HKT 17:15

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