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The symposium, to be opened by the Governor, will be attended by businessmen, industrialists, representatives from the services sector, government officials and academics.
It aims to stimulate debates in the community, and in particular among the services sector, on the way forward for the further development of Hong Kong's services.
The symposium will cover a wide range of issues on service industry as well as issues facing a number of individual service sectors, such as financial services, the 'trading' sectors (import/export, wholesale and retail), and information technology.
Speakers include local and overseas experts in specific areas and Government
officials.
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Protecting HK's environment a difficult task
The Director of Environmental Protection, Dr Stuart Reed, today (Tuesday) likened the job of looking after Hong Kong's environment to the trials of Hercules and the punishment meted out to Sisyphus to labour vainly rolling a block of marble uphill from whence it always rolled down again.
Speaking at a luncheon meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce, Dr Reed said there was a more or less directly proportional relationship between the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) and pressure on the environment, adding that the amount of garbage Hong Kong generated increased proportionately with GDP.
"The over 1,000 per cent increase in GDP in the past 20 years has therefore meant an equivalent scale of increase in pressure on the environment. So it has often been a case for us of 'running hard just to stand still'," he said.
Despite all the difficulties, Dr Reed said he still had some good news as to where Hong Kong had got to in environmental terms.
Among them was a complete transformation in the priority allocated to the "Cinderellas" of Public Works Programmes - sewerage and garbage disposal, from less than $300 million per annum spent on these in 1986 to $3,900 million in the present financial year and a further $6,400 million in the coming financial year.