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FS: Government continues to support business

The Financial Secretary, Mr Donald Tsang, today (Thursday) vowed to continue providing the incentives, infrastructural support and information that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) needed to compete effectively and to succeed,

Speaking at the Hong Kong Export Credit Insurance Corporation's 30th Anniversary Celebration, Mr Tsang said that the Government saw its responsibility as providing a favourable, modern and business-friendly environment to enterprises - some 98 per cent of which was classified as SMEs.

business

"We provide a sound framework within which businesses are well rewarded when the risks they take are successful. We encourage our SMEs to try new ideas when existing ones do not seem to work.

"At the end of the day, the onus of creating successful enterprises rests with the SMEs themselves," the Financial Secretary said.

While elaborating on Hong Kong fundamental economic philosophy, Mr Tsang emphasised that central economic planning had no place in Hong Kong.

"We leave commercial decisions to our entrepreneurs. They are far more sensitive to market forces than we are within Government, and they are set to gain or lose according to the decisions they make," Mr Tsang said.

Putting the free market policy into practice. Mr Tsang said that the Government role was to maintain a low, simple and predictable tax regime so as to encourage creation of wealth; create a level playing field for all enterprises; maintain an impartial legal and judicial system and to provide a clean and efficient civil service.

"At the same time, we invest heavily in human and physical infrastructure to meet the needs of enterprises, small, medium or large," Mr Tsang added.

In highlighting the many endeavours that the Government provided for SMEs, the Financial Secretary said that the Government had provided support to SMEs in areas concerning training, industrial support funding, marketing information, industrial consultancy and export insurance.