COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
The Government practises an open and liberal investment policy, and has concluded bilateral investment promotion and protection agreements with 14 of its major investment partners: Australia, Austria, Belgium/Luxembourg, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A primary objective of these agreements is to assure overseas investors of the stable investment environment in Hong Kong.
Chart 5: Enterprise Groups (EGs) with External Direct Investment by Employment Size in mid-1999
No. of EGs
8 000
7 000
6 231
6 000
5 000
4 000
3. 000
2.000
1 272
768
762
1 000
119
80
23
0
Less than
20-
50-
100-
500-
20
49
99
499
999
1 000- 2.999
3 000 or
more
Employment Size
108
Documentation of Imports and Exports
As a free port, the HKSAR has minimal import and export licensing requirements. Most products do not need licences to enter or leave Hong Kong. Where licences or notifications are required, they are intended to achieve two main objectives. Firstly, they help the HKSAR fulfil its international obligations to restrain exports of textiles products and monitor the flow of these products into and out of Hong Kong. Secondly, they are imposed on grounds of health, safety, environmental protection, intellectual property protection, anti-smuggling efforts or unrestricted access to high technology products. Items covered include strategic commodities, rice, chilled or frozen meat and poultry, pharmaceutical products and medicines, pesticides, radioactive substances and irradiating apparatus, left-hand-drive vehicles, ozone- depleting substances and optical disc mastering and replication equipment.