}
flow of investment into Hong Kong from Japan will steadily increase
in the coming years. The Japanese would not continue to invest in
Hong Kong if they were not confident about its future.
In general; foreign investment in Hong Kong contributes to
the development of the Hong Kong economy and the enrichment of
its people's lives. Moreover, foreign investment in the manu-
facturing sector improves Hong Kong's export performance. May
I take this opportunity to make some frank suggestions on what
ought to be done in Hong Kong in order to attract more foreign
investment, particularly in the manufacturing sector. It would
not be an overstatement to say that Hong Kong's prosperity would
be seriously undermined without the continuing inflow of foreign
investment. Statistics indicate that the service industry
occupies an increasingly important role in the Hong Kong economy.
The expansion of the service industry as such is a welcome trend.
At the same time, however, the manufacturing industry, being the other vital pillar of the Hong Kong economy, should be given more
attention by the people of Hong Kong. In recent years, Hong Kong's
investment in its manufacturing sector has not grown much.
Also,
In addition, further improvement in infrastructure, such as
industrial estates and transportation, is desirable.
more efforts should be made to increase the quality of the
labour force. These undertakings are necessary to maintain
Hong Kong's favourable investment climate.
The third area is trade, and, in particular, Hong Kong's
exports to Japan. In the last five years exports have grown only
gradually. However, I am happy to note that in the first half of
this year export growth has been spectacular with a 16 per cent
increase over the same period last year. The reasons for this
growth are multi-fold. First, this growth is in part the fruit
of years of serious efforts by the people of Hong Kong to penetrate
the Japanese market. A second reason is that the share of manufactur
goods in Japan's total imports has increased from 22.8 per cent to
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