The Hong Kong government is committed to promoting e-commerce to help retain Hong Kong's competitive edge and to drive its overall economic expansion, a senior official said on January 7.

Speaking at a forum on Hong Kong's competitiveness in the new millennium, Director of Information Technology Services Lau Kam-hung said that the conduct of trade through the Internet was gaining popularity worldwide.

In 1998, the total amount of trade conducted all over the world through the Internet was 200 billion US dollars. The number of consumers who shop on the Internet are expected to increase from 31 million in 1998 to 183 million by 2003.

At present, there are about 1.5 million of Internet users in Hong Kong and the use of the Internet in Hong Kong last year, calculated in the time spent on the dail-up network, doubled that in 1998, according to Lau.

The total amount of trade of goods and services in Hong Kong conducted over the Internet is predicted by the industry to rise to 2.4 billion US dollars by 2003 from 60 million U.S. dollars in 1998, Lau said.

With a view to promoting and facilitating e-commerce in Hong Kong, Lau said, the Hong Kong government has adopted a proactive approach to enhance Hong Kong's infrastructure and services.

The government is working with the Hong Kong Post in the development of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to enhance the users' confidence in electronic transactions, Lau said.

The Information Technology Services Department is going to set up the Certification Authority Recognition Office (CARO) to support the PKI, he said.

Through the use of digital certificates issued by certificationauthorities (CAs) and digital signatures, participants in electronic transactions will be able to ensure the authenticity, security, integrity and non-repudiation of messages exchanged in the transactions, he said.

To provide the necessary legal framework for the conduct of electronic transactions in Hong Kong, the government had introduced into the Legislative Council the Electronic Transactions Bill which was enacted on January 5, Lau said.

With the enactment of the Bill, electronic records and signatures used in electronic transactions will have the same legal status as that of their paper-based counterparts, and a framework is established to promote and facilitate the operation of CAs to ensure trust and security in electronic transactions.

"To lead by example in the adoption of e-commerce, the government is going to introduce the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) scheme," Lau said, adding that the scheme was expected to be launched in October this year.

Lau believed the ESD scheme could help create an environment conducive to the development and adoption of e-commerce as the open and common information infrastructure being developed for thescheme would be available to the private sector for conducting e-commerce at a later stage.