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"By 2011, 15 years from now, the demand will be 36 million TEUs a year; and by 2016 the demand will have grown to almost 40 million TEUs.
"Handling that demand will mean building a substantial and ongoing construction programme.'
Mr Clark said that Hong Kong needed to build the facilities because there was no other port in the area that could handle the throughput.
He pointed out, however, that: "Hong Kong does have competition. We expect to lose substantial ocean transhipment trade to Kaohsiung and northern ports such as Kobe and Busan over the medium to long term.
"Sooner or later direct trade links will be established between Taiwan and the mainland and Hong Kong will lose this transhipment market. This is currently estimated at some one million TEUS a year.
"Although this transhipment market will be lost, Hong Kong is expected to gain in throughput overall because much of the direct trade in south China goods for Taiwan and many Taiwanese products sold in Guangdong, will be shipped through Hong Kong.
"The loss of some inter-ocean and the mainland-Taiwan transhipment will mean that Hong Kong becomes more and more focused on handling cargoes to and from southern China. It is handling these cargoes that will drive development of Hong Kong's port over our current planning period."
Turning to the wide-spread port development in the Pearl River Delta, Mr Clark said that some of these ports did not have natural deep water access and the dredging required to provide this would be costly.
Nearly all of them, with the obvious exception of Yantian, were being developed as feeder ports with Hong Kong as the hub.
Mr Clark said: "By the time Yantian is operating at anything near capacity, the demand on Hong Kong will be so great that we will welcome the relief that Yantian affords.
"The picture we see emerging is of Hong Kong developing more and more as a hub port for southern China, with feeder services to smaller ports in the Pearl River Delta.