INDUSTRY AND TRADE
13
1980. More than 70 applications for sites in the Tai Po Industrial Estate have been received and land has been offered for several projects.
In the meantime, five more special industry projects were granted land by private treaty to operate on Tsing Yi Island. In February, a site of 12,000 square metres was granted to a firm setting up a machinery plant; another site of 4,790 square metres was granted to a local company to produce textile auxiliary chemicals. Later in the year, sites totalling more than 40 hectares on the west coast of Tsing Yi were granted for three shipyard projects. Land was made available in Kwai Chung for container maintenance and repair servicing, while applications for special industry sites for chlor-alkali manufacture, industrial gas production and food processing were under consideration at the year's end.
The government also has decided to proceed with the construction of more flatted factory blocks to cater for squatter workshops and small operators in permanent buildings requiring clearance for public purposes. Several sites were selected.
The average realised price of auctioned industrial sites, mostly located in urban areas such as Yau Tong and Shau Kei Wan, was slightly higher than in the previous year, indicating no slackening of demand for industrial land.
Hong Kong industrialists have responded to increasing competition from other developing countries in the region by continuing to modernise their operations and by moving into more sophisticated product lines. An increasing number of com- ponent parts for existing lines are being produced locally and the quality of finished products continues to improve.
Industrial Investment Promotion
The Department of Trade, Industry and Customs continued to work closely with statutory and non-statutory trade and industrial organisations in the overseas promotion of industrial investment in Hong Kong. The major activities in 1977 included a series of industrial investment promotion missions to Australia, Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland and the United States. At the end of the year, there were at least 339 factories in Hong Kong either fully or partly-owned by overseas interests - almost 17 per cent more than in 1976. These factories employed 74,758 workers or 9.8 per cent of the total workforce in the manu- facturing industry. The total direct investment involved was about $2,000 million. The main sources of such investment are the United States, Japan, Britain, the Netherlands and Australia. The principal industries involved are electronics and textiles, although there are new investments in fields such as light and medium engineering industries.
Textiles and Clothing
The textiles and clothing industry is Hong Kong's largest, employing about 45 per cent of the total industrial workforce and producing some 47 per cent of total domestic exports. Export performance in 1977 was, however, slack because overseas markets were weak, particularly those in Europe. The cotton spinning and weaving sector suffered most.
Production in the spinning sector was below capacity in 1977 and the output of cotton yarn decreased from 196.1 million kilograms in 1976 to 170.1 million kilograms.