At the 14th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) SME Ministerial Meeting held March 8-9 in Hobart, Australia, member economies praised the Hong Kong government’s outreach work to understand and meet the needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
At the meetings, Director-General of Trade and Industry Joseph Lai briefed the representatives of 20 other APEC member economies on Hong Kong’s recent efforts to improve its business environment.
Under the theme, “Driving SME Growth Through Economic Reform,” APEC ministers and other government representatives discussed policies and initiatives to drive SME growth through economic reform and enhancing the business-operating environment.
Speaking at the Ministerial Forum Session, Mr. Lai said Hong Kong has a favorable business environment, supported by the rule of law, an independent judiciary, free flows of capital and information, a low and simple tax structure and a clean and efficient government.
“Under our ‘market leads, government facilitates’ policy, we are committed to making it easy to start and run business in Hong Kong,” he said. “Over the years, we have been working continuously to improve our business environment. For example, we have shortened our processing time for license applications, simplified our licensing conditions where possible and introduced many business facilitation measures.
“We are gearing ourselves for the ‘Be the Smart Regulator’ program, which is a new round of our concerted efforts to further simplify our regulatory regime,” he said.
Mr. Lai also said Hong Kong has always attached importance to enabling the development of high-value added and technology-based industries and services.
Noting that APEC provides an excellent forum for member economies to share useful experiences in driving SME growth, Mr. Lai said he believes such experience sharing is conducive to helping SMEs survive and sustain development amid the ever-changing global business environment.
In the Joint Ministerial Statement issued after the meetings, ministers encouraged member economies to make every effort to develop and implement specific measures to improve their competitiveness, innovation and entrepreneurship.
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