21. Imported labour, working here legally, does have an important role to play in our economy. Even more important, however, is to make the very best of our own talent. It is the Government's role to support economic change. We must not let our workers be marooned by the decline of established industries or become the casualties of technological and economic revolutions. We have made a start with an employee retraining scheme specifically designed to help workers gain new skills. A special Retraining Fund is to be set up, based on the levy paid by employers for permission to import workers, and the relevant Bill is being examined by this Council.
22. We are determined to make a success of this scheme. We propose therefore to make an immediate injection into the Fund of $300 million, over and above the income from the levy. That injection, by itself, should enable us to retrain more than 15 000 workers over the next two to three years: more than double the number originally planned. I hope employers will make full use of those who have acquired new skills through this programme.
Research and Development
23. The rapid expansion of tertiary education has provided Hong Kong with a new pool of highly-trained talent. We must use their expertise to bridge a major gap in Hong Kong's infrastructure: our ability to develop and adapt new technology.
24. We cannot expect to achieve this goal on the cheap. We will have to provide the tertiary institutions with the cash they need to encourage their staff and graduate students to undertake research projects. The University and Polytechnic Grants Committee, through the Research Grants Council, already allocates funds for this purpose. These will be increased from $122 million this year to $144 million next year, and to about $180 million in 1994/95—a real increase of over 20% a year. The need for further increases beyond 1994/95 will be considered sympathetically in the context of the funding requirement for the tertiary institutions for the 1995-98 triennium. These public funds should be regarded as seed money. We expect the private sector to play its part. As our academics establish a reputation for excellence in research as well as in teaching, they will be well placed to attract commercial support for their projects. So the supply of qualified academics will increase at a
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