industry. It is an essential course of development for labour-intensive industries to change progressively into capital intensive and technology-intensive industries in a bid to manufacture higher production cost and more diversified products. However, it will not be easy for us to really attain industrial diversification and enhance the level of production technology. Let us take a look at those industrially developed countries in Asia like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and even Singapore. They have more advanced industrial technology and are thus in a better position to manufacture higher technology products than Hong Kong. One of the main reasons for this is naturally the direct involvement and support by their own. governments. However, in the case of Hong Kong industry in which medium and small scale manufacturers form its back-bone,
it would not be an easy task to ask these manufacturers to conduct researches in the development of their products, to make investments in advanced production technology and facilities, to train and produce technical personnels as well as to seek to explore new markets for their products. I wish to state here specifically that I am not urging the Government to directly fund the manufacturing industry and to give directions relating to the course of industrial development from the central government like what the Japanese, South
Koreans and Taiwanese are doing. This is naturally impracticable in Hong Kong with its present industrial scale and structure. In any case I consider that there are still certain important tasks that need to be promptly undertaken by the Hong Kong Government in terms of providing indirect support to our industry to help strengthen the existing bases and expand the areas for investment.
To set up a product research and technology development centre
To pave the way for industrial diversification and production of higher quality goods, an urgent task for the Government is to set up a product research and technology development centre to devise a systematic working programme