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4
4. Looking at manufacturing concentration by sectors of industry, Appendix A (attached), taken from p 452 of CME, shows how many firms it takes in each sector to produce 50% of the whole sector's sales. The key to the industry sector codes is Appendix B. The important features from this table are summarised in table 4.
Table 4 (source: Table 21, p 452, CME 1971)
Sales as
Industry
Code No of
no firms
No of employees
% of all manuf. employees
Sales (HK$m)
% of all
manuf.
sales
Clothing (woven)
221 69
41,966
6.25
1,514
8.39
Knitwear
225 66
19,488
2.90
714
3.96
Electronics
*834 12
15,730
2.34
624
3.46
Cotton spinning
*250
7
11,473
1.71
543
3.01
Cotton weaving
•
*260 12
10,694
1.59
463
2.57
Plastic toys
562 50
21,519
3.21
430
2.38
Wigs
904
11
6,681
1.00
372
2.06
Other plastics
569 79
10,859
1.62
303
1.68
Metal products
819 72
8,522
1.27
237
1.31
Bleaching and dyeing
*280
3
1,994
0.30
202
1.12
Finished textiles
Plastic flowers
212 17
3,785
0.56
155
0.86
561
43
5,478
0.82
150
0.83
Printing
and publishing
Wool spinning
•
Steel
and ships
429 50
4,455
0.66
148
0.82
*251 3
1,884
0.28
141
0.78
*710 and 846
3 222 25
666
0.01
127
0.70
4,037
0.60
123
0.68
Gloves
5.
Summing for the starred industries, we see forty firms employing 6.23% of all manufacturing employees to produce 11.64% of all Hong Kong's manufact- uring sales in 1970 (I have deliberately excluded 904, as the wig industry boomed in the late 60's but has since died). None of the industries in Appendix A where there are blanks for the 50% concentration ratio had sales exceeding 0.55% of total manufacturing sales.
6.
Appendix C shows concentrations by sales for each manufacturing sector. The only column of interest is that of $20,000+. I have ringed the industries with significant concentrations.
7.
Conclusion
*
Much will have changed in the intervening years, so that any percentages drawn from the CME should be regarded as only giving an order of magnitude. In general, industry structure is not very concentrated. However, industry ownership is the World Bank Report said that twenty-six men and fifteen Chinese families control most of the eighty local companies listed on the Stock Exchange. A lot of the remaining big companies will be subsidiaries of overseas firms and these latter will be very concerned about possible changes of government.
20 January 1978
Mark Hull
Mark Hull
(private) Economists Department tumover) 100, firms in the UK produced 44% of manufacturing tumover the largest 134 firms produce 30.6% of manufacturing sales, in Hong Kong). However
*For comparison the largest (by tumover) 100, firs in 1972 (Table 2: there is no point in extending the comparison since the UK includes all of a firm's subsidiaries) while even if Hong Kong produced statistics on on probably not capture the effective influence of a very small number of shareholders
figures
are done
on an
enterprise basis (firms'
enterprise basis it would
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