XN000022-1995-12-14 — Page 12

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I say now, as I've said before, that Hong Kong needs everyone's talents. The talents of those with disabilities I include very high up on that list. We're not so prosperous that we can afford to do without the talents of any of our citizens.

Mr Leung Yiu-chung (in Chinese): Mr President, recently, the economy has slackened; many medium and small businesses are shrinking and as a result many employees have lost their jobs or they have become unemployed or under-employed. It is because, in the past, the entire society of Hong Kong as well as the Hong Kong Government, lacked a long term economic policy and an industrial policy. So a question for the Governor.

In the light of the circumstances, what solid measures, what concrete measures, will be taken up by the Government to solve the problem? What sort of a role will be played by the Government so that people would not remain unemployed?

Governor: I hope the honourable gentleman won't take it personally if I say that I take exception to his argument that we don't have a long term economic policy and happen to think that the endorsement of the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum and the Heritage Foundation, are perhaps of greater moment than his criticism of government policy.

The one anxiety expressed by the IMF whose report is and I quote in their own words, "highly positive and favourable", the one concern that they have is that we won't stick to present policies. Present policies which have brought us now, I think it is, 36 years of uninterrupted economic growth. Present policies which have made this community, as far as the region and the world is concerned, a model about how to run a free market economy.

Now, of course from time to time we have to make adjustments, but I don't think that one of the adjustments that we should make is into - and I don't mean this in any political sense of course is into old style socialism. I don't think that we should start getting into the sort of interventionist policies which have caused so much havoc elsewhere in the world.

That does not mean that we don't do anything to help our industry. Let me give the honourable member three examples of what I am talking about. First of all, the most helpful thing you can do with industry is to tax it less, and there is hardly any commercial activity in the region or the world which operates within a more benign tax regime than happens in Hong Kong.