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the necessary infrastructural support. We must move ahead as we have already lost valuable years pondering over the proposal. I need not be so long-winded as to explain the details nor the importance of product innovation and design as
it is well-known in the industrial circle.
Industrial Automation
Along with product innovation and design, industrial automation is another subject close to my heart. Hong Kong's past development was based on the labour intensive industries as labour was inexpensive and the supply was plentiful. It was an absolutely correct development strategy as we needed to provide employment for our people. But time has changed and we have made significant progress both on the social and economic fronts. The upgrading of our educational standard is yet another important step that we have taken. The young people, as I have on past occasions said, tend to be reluctant to join industry. There are people in our community who have accused the manufacturing sector of not paying competitive wages. I do not wish to argue this point but I would like to point out that the wages of an average Hong Kong factory worker is higher than our competitors, namely South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore which share with us the same market with similar products. opinion, the reluctance of young people to join indistry is a social trend. It is no different from what happened in the United States, Western Europe and Japan in the past and it is still true today. So what is the next step in the local industrial scene? We should take a step in the direction of automation. A proposal was put forward by the Hong Kong Productivity Centre to establish an Industrial Automation Unit within the Centre to cater for the requirements of industry, to assist industry regardless whether it is large or small, to move towards automating the manufacturing processes, to strengthen our competitive edge and to provide consistent quality and delivery of our products. As Chairman of the Hong
In my