Principal Hong Kong Economic and Trade Representative in Tokyo, Miss Cheung Man-yee, today (April 25) called on Japanese businessmen to make use of the huge potential for further collaboration between Hong Kong and Oita.

Speaking at a business seminar at the Oita Prefecture in Kyushu, Miss Cheung urged the Japanese businessmen to visit Hong Kong and see for themselves what Hong Kong had to offer.

"I very much hope that the Hong Kong-Oita partnership grows and matures into the future," she said.

Miss Cheung noted that Hong Kong and Oita already enjoyed a close bilateral link, with some 14,000 Hong Kong tourists visiting Oita in 1999 to enjoy its spectacular landscape and rich cultural heritage.

On trade and investment, Miss Cheung said that last year alone, the bilateral trade between Hong Kong and Oita amounted to some $185 million (about 2,900 million yen).

"And the presence of many of your companies in Hong Kong has contributed to making Japan the largest source country of regional offices of overseas companies in Hong Kong."

Updating the audience on the latest political and economic situation of Hong Kong, Miss Cheung said there was a mushrooming of IT related companies in Hong Kong during the last two years, given the entrepreneurial spirit of Hong Kong people and positive support of the Government.

She said these companies had forged new ties with leading hi-tech and Internet multinationals in their ventures into business opportunities in the cyberspace.

This momentum, she said, was in turn inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Miss Cheung said the encouraging development of Hong Kong's IT industry was to some extent made possible by Hong Kong's excellent telecommunications infrastructure, and the growth in this sector could be reflected in the huge increase in the use of Internet in Hong Kong.

"Already, one in two households now has a computer at home and over one-third of our population, or some 2.5 million people, are Internet users who generated over 15 billion minutes of Internet traffic in 2000 - a 40 per cent increase over the previous year."

"Perhaps influencing this has been the ease with which people can log-on through the many Internet Service Providers, which now number over 240, one of the world's highest ratio of ISPs to population," she said.

Miss Cheung said Hong Kong's competitiveness was dictated by the nature of its small and highly externally oriented economy, which was why Hong Kong had repeatedly been ranked as one of the freest markets in the world.

"Just a week ago, the Cato and Fraser Institutes of the US and Canada, in conjunction with 50 other independent research foundations, ranked Hong Kong as the world's freest economy. In last year's end, the Heritage Foundation - for the 7th year in a row - gave us top billing."

"On the other hand, Fortune Magazine, which predicted the death of Hong Kong only a few years ago, recently voted us the best city for doing business in the Asia Pacific Region and the Fortune Global Forum will be held in Hong Kong in May this year," she said.

Today's business seminar was the first Hong Kong Business Seminar ever held jointly by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Tokyo and the Oita Prefecture Government.

Earlier today, Miss Cheung called on the Governor of Oita, Mr Morihiko Hiramatsu; the Mayor of Oita City, Mr Keinosuke Kinoshita, and the Chairman of the Oita Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr Shozo Ando.