HK seen to emerge as e-commerce hub
By Don Gasper
STORY: HONG KONG can establish itself as a leading regional centre for electronic commerce, overhauling rival Singapore in the process, experts said yesterday.
Speakers at the last of the American Chamber of Commerce IT Committee's series of luncheon talks on technology yesterday pointed to opportunities for Hong Kong to blaze a trail for e-commerce in Asia.
Denny Lo, managing director for South China and Hong Kong at BroadVision Asia Pacific, said that until recently Singapore had been in the vanguard of e-business developments in Asia. But in the last eight months the tide had turned and there had been a flood of companies coming to Hong Kong.
While some companies had fled at the height of the Asian financial crisis a couple of years ago, they were now flooding back, Mr Lo said. ``Things are moving much faster here than in the rest of the region and the wave is not going to slow down,' he said.
The main reason for Singapore's lead had been the backing of its government for Internet initiatives. About 18 months ago, the Singapore government had started pushing banks into backing e-commerce.
At that time, when banks in Singapore had one after the other begun forming a Web presence to provide e-banking services, Hong Kong had just looked on. Now, however, the SAR had started to ramp up, even though it was still trailing Singapore, he said.
Mr Lo attributed the change in Hong Kong to the high-profile government support for information technology (IT) and the investment of Li Ka-shing's family in it. ``The public has realised that Hong Kong needs value-added services to propel the economy.'
Mr Lo, whose company helps firms build up business-to-business and business-to-customer e-commerce systems, said one of Hong Kong's strongest advantages was its good infrastructure for broadband. There was more bandwidth here than elsewhere, he said, and Internet penetration was also very high. ``Because of the high population density, it is more cost-effective to supply buildings with fibre optic cable than it is, for instance, in the United States.'
Liberalisation in the regulation of telecommunication and wireless operators could also enable Hong Kong to leapfrog over its competitors. Mr Lo said Hong Kong remained a paramount financial centre with more hot money attracted here than elsewhere. Also, with the coming entry of the mainland into the World Trade Organisation, foreign companies were seeing Hong Kong as a springboard for their expansion in China.
Mr Lo said that Hong Kong's problem was that it was short of technically competent personnel. Tom Burns, director of Content Group Asia Pacific, Intel Semiconductor, said there was an incredible opportunity for Hong Kong to apply its legal framework and basic entrepreneurship to the Web. The best way forward was for local firms knowledgeable about the region to work together with multinational companies such as his own.
Although he did not rule out the possibility that Hong Kong might succeed in establishing its own Silicon Valley, he cautioned that it took a long time to incubate high-tech companies and get them started. |
