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HK Has Potential to Become E-commerce Hub in Asia-Pacific
Hong Kong has witnessed tremendous progress in its development and adoption of e-commerce in the past two to three years and had potential to become e-commerce hub in Asia-Pacific.
It was stated by Carrie Yau, secretary for information technology and broadcasting of HKSAR, when addressing the Hong Kong-Canada Business Association luncheon in Vancouver on Thursday.
Yau said that internet banking, online stock trading and Internet shopping were becoming part of the community's daily lives. And in one to two months' time the Electronic Service Delivery scheme - Hong Kong's flagship Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and Government-to-Business (G2B) online service - would also be launched.
Yau is currently leading a Hong Kong IT delegation to Canada to promote co-operation and exchange on IT between the two places.
She told the audience that Hong Kong was recognized internationally as one of the places with the best potential to develop e-business and had every potential of becoming the e-commerce hub for the Asia Pacific Region.
"The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Hong Kong's e-business readiness as ninth in the world, and second in Asia. And, according to Forrester Research, Hong Kong will be among the lead group of economies in Asia-Pacific to register e-business hyper-growth, with the value of e-business surging to 70 billion US dollars in 2004," she said.
She believed that Hong Kong's traditional strength had contributed to the positive outlook for its e-business development.
These include its excellent business environment, world-renowned physical infrastructure such as the airport and port facilities, open market economy, free flow of information, freedom of speech and the rule of law.
She believed that the imminent accession by China to the WTO would create enormous opportunities for the development of cross-border e-commerce to and from China.
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