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Speed urged for container terminal development
The Port Development Board warned today (Wednesday) that failure to develop the Lantau Port Container terminal facilities as soon as practical would have serious adverse effects, both socially and economically on Hong Kong.
Speaking after a routine meeting of the board's Container Handling Committee, Mr Gerry Forsgate, chairman of the committee, said the port and its related industries already provided employment for one in eight of the workforce.
As manufacturing jobs continue to relocate to China, the service industry sector, of which the port is probably the most significant generator, needs to expand to provide replacement job opportunities.
Additional port facilities must be provided both in Hong Kong and nearby to cater for the increasing flow of goods into and out of the Pearl River Delta area.
If no new facilities are built in Hong Kong, cargoes would be diverted to alternative ports. Once that happens it would not be long before the service industries also moved out.
"We are talking about real people here
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up to a million people directly dependent on the port and its industries. They all stand to lose if government does not get on with Lantau Port as quickly as possible," he said.
"In more esoteric terms, in 1994, container handling added some $214 billion to the local economy. Forecasts show that this will rise to $384 billion in 2001 and $633 billion in 2011," he added.
Mr Forsgate said these benefits to the economy would come about only if the port expanded to meet the demand.
He pointed out that though China was developing container ports, they alone would not be able to handle the huge growth in throughput forecast for the next few
years.
"We are not talking about unlimited port growth in Hong Kong," he added. "We should concentrate on providing facilities to handle the demand for the next decade. Perhaps by then China's ports will be sufficiently developed to cope with some of the ever-expanding demand."