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Motion debate on economic strategy
Following is the speech by the acting Financial Secretary, the Hon T H Chau, in the motion debate on economic strategy in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
I share the concern expressed by many Honourable Members today about the genuine difficulties encountered by people displaced from jobs they have held for many years. Indeed, my colleagues and I agree with the underlying message of the Motion, which is that everyone who wants a job should be able to find one.
Turning to substance, however, the Motion urges the Government to formulate both short and long-term strategies to stimulate the economy and create employment opportunities. The proposed amendments call for tax concessions or tax incentives, and measures to address high rentals. These apparently attractive requests would, in fact, require a drastic change to Hong Kong's fundamental economic philosophy. This philosophy has helped Hong Kong not only to cope so well with the restructuring of its economy in the past decade but also to become the economic miracle that it is today. Let me explain why.
The Proven Value of Our Economic Philosophy
Despite the impression given by the wording of the Motion, we do have an economic strategy which we have pursued consistently, with conviction, and with proven success. It stems from our fundamental philosophy that allowing market forces to determine the allocation of resources generates the most wealth and the greatest benefit to the community. Within this framework, our economic policy is simple and effective. On the one hand, we refrain from interfering with either the pace or the direction of economic development. On the other hand, we provide what is arguably the best business environment in the world.
It is a policy which recognises that economic development is best guided by the people who stand to win or lose by the business decisions they make. Centrally- determined visions of the future are not only most likely to be wrong, as experience in other economies has clearly and abundantly shown. To the extent that they blind us to alternative paths to economic development, they are also unhelpful. Who, for instance, could have envisioned in 1985, that Hong Kong investors would today, 10 into short years later, control a huge trans-border manufacturing base, stretching far up the Pearl River delta, employing more than three million manufacturing workers in Guangdong province alone, and fuelling an enormous growth in our service sector? Certainly not the bureaucrats, and if one bureaucrat had provided such a vision in 1985, no one, including those then in this Council, no one would have believed it.
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