29 -
Policy of "Maximum Support, Minimum Intervention" stressed
The Director-General of Industry, Mrs Regina Ip, today (Thursday) said continued adherence to the market-driven system coupled with maximum infrastructural support by Government was key to Hong Kong's success in maintaining a strong, regional manufacturing base into the next century.
In her keynote speech at a conference on "Business in Hong Kong: 2000 and Beyond" organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, Mrs Ip said Hong Kong's remarkable economic success was clear evidence that the market- driven approach was much more effective than the heavy hand of the Government in propelling economic development.
"While the Hong Kong Government does not have an interventionist industrial policy, the Hong Kong Government firmly believes in the importance of the manufacturing sector and has consistently adopted a policy of 'Maximum Support, Minimum Intervention'.
"Notwithstanding the much lighter hand of Government in managing the economic life of Hong Kong, our market-driven system has delivered notable successes in many areas. The development of Information Technology is the case in point," she said.
Mrs Ip noted that propelled by market forces, Hong Kong entrepreneurs had built a highly sophisticated, advanced telecoms system providing a strong foundation for Hong Kong to make extensive use of the Internet.
"Whereas a regional neighbour intent on developing IT has only three Internet Service Providers (ISPs), by the latest count Hong Kong has over 60," she said.
With funding from the Industrial Support Fund, a local university has built the Hong Kong Internet Exchange to provide a common ethernet line to interconnect local ISPs via leased lines with T1 speed.
This year, it is proceeding to upgrade the existing backbone and build a regional information infrastructure to increase significantly the capacity of the existing backbone, and to provide for future anticipated broadband multimedia applications on the Internet.
The Director-General stressed that the Government was not always 'non- interventionist', and that 'non intervention' was not equivalent to absence of support.