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Entry visa for Taiwan visitors
Following is the speech by the Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, in the motion debate on entry visa for Taiwan visitors in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
Honourable Members have spoken on the importance of Taiwanese visitors to Hong Kong's tourist industry, and on the possible competition generated by the new airport in Macau. There is no doubt that tourism is a very important economic activity for Hong Kong, and that earnings from tourism contribute significantly to our economy. Let me assure Honourable Members that our policy, in so far as immigration aspects are concerned, is to facilitate as far as possible the ease of travel of visitors in a manner consistent with the need to secure the integrity of our immigration control.
We handled over 9.3 million visitors last year. Of this number, about one fifth, or 1.65 million were Taiwanese visitors. According to the Hong Kong Tourist Association, Taiwanese visitors spent $13.8 billion in Hong Kong in 1994. This represented, in percentage terms, 22% of total tourist spending in 1994. In other words, for every dollar spent by tourists, about 22 cents came from a Taiwanese visitor. It is important for Hong Kong to remain an attractive, and easily accessible city for Taiwanese and other tourists and business travellers. We aim to remove unnecessary barriers to their travel to Hong Kong, while maintaining the necessary safeguards to our security. To these ends, we have progressively taken steps to simplify procedures to facilitate travellers, including those from Taiwan. Before I talk about the improvements we have made, I would first like to explain our entry requirements for visitors in general, and for Taiwanese visitors in particular.
Hong Kong has a very liberal visa regime. People from more than 170 countries and territories do not need visas to visit Hong Kong. Visitors from these countries and territories may travel to Hong Kong without visas for short visits, normally ranging from 14 days to 3 months. This liberal visa-regime goes a long way towards attracting people from all over the world to visit Hong Kong and to do business here. Ease of travel encourages contact at all levels between people from different parts of the world. This, I believe, has contributed in no small manner to the economic development of Hong Kong in recent years.
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