XN000022-1996-03-12 — Page 3

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Services promotion a timely exercise: Governor

Hong Kong is now at a juncture where it must examine clear-headedly how it can move forward in producing goods and services that create more value in order to help raise the standards of living of our community.

In this pursuit, the role of the Government is to help the business community remove constraints, to help improve the culture and the infrastructure that give the flexibility and the freedom to respond to opportunity and to develop business.

The remarks were made by the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, at the Symposium "Hong Kong Into the 21st Century: The Servicing Economy", today (Tuesday).

The symposium is jointly organised by the Government and the business community to discuss and exchange views on the development of Hong Kong's services sector and the facilitating role of the Government.

The Governor noted that during the past decade, Hong Kong had experienced dynamic growth in its services sector and had now ranked as the world's 10th largest exporter of services.

"More recently our services surplus has grown at a more deliberate pace. There are concerns that problems with productivity and high costs may be eroding our competitiveness as a service provider," he said.

The Governor stressed that Hong Kong had reached a juncture where it was timely for the Government and business community to jointly develop practical ideas to reinvigorate services sector productivity and deal with rising costs and sharpen it competitiveness as a service provider.

Noting that manufacturing and services together constituted the key pillars of our economy, Mr Patten said the transformation from a manufacturing to a service- oriented economy in the territory should be seen more accurately as a transformation from a lower-skilled, lower value-added economy to a higher-skilled and higher value- added one.

"Restructuring and realignment may be required but it has been one of Hong Kong's great advantages, both economically and socially, that it is not afraid of such change.