Capitalizing our Strength & Recapturing the Pride of Hong Kong, Textile & Clothing Industry does have a part to play --- Dr. Hon. Lam Tai Fai, our School Supervisor, calls for the support of the HKSAR government for boosting the development of Textile and Clothing Industry 重振紡織製衣業 繫於政府的支持 on Wednesday,
Hong Kong Textile & Clothing industry has made tremendous contribution to our overall economic development as recalled by Dr Lam. The huge number of jobs created by the growth of the industry had helped us cope with the rapid expansion of population in the 50s & 60s, propelling Hong Kong onto one of the main manufacturing and export centre of the world in the 60s-70s laying a solid foundation for Hong Kong success today. As a result, a lot of the characters and life in factories were featured in the local films. In the past 20 years, Dr. Lam witnessed the transformation as well as the ups & downs of the textile industry and still he sees high hopes for the development of industry in Hong Kong.
As the strength of Hong Kong tells us, the Textile & Clothing industry's contribution is more than just to the economy. The very difficult environment and the immense challenges which our early industrialists and workers had to overcome in building Hong Kong's industrial sector have nurtured into Hong Kong people a self-reliant, hardworking, and entrepreneurial spirit, which has become the symbol of Hong Kong, the pride of Hong Kong.
Despite most of the production has shifted north to the Mainland, the front-shop-back-factory strategy can fully utilize the merits of the two regions. Dr. Lam thinks that Hong Kong can be the marketing, merchandising and design centre for the business. He epitomizes that in resurgence, Hong Kong industry can once again recapture her former strength and glamour. He points out that, the well-developed judicial and banking system, free flow of information and a huge diversity of human resources are all 『soft strength' possessed by Hong Kong. The genuine sense of fashion with global vision, rigid quality control and R&D experience would allow the city to stand firm as the business leader in the region.
Due to keen competition in the region, the HKSAR government should learn from the lesson of the decline of industry which may be attributed to unfriendly policies, and greater effort to re-vitalizing the dynamism of Textile and Clothing industry in Hong Kong by demonstrating and publicizing the strengths of local firms to overseas corporate so as to open up more new markets..
Dr. Lam stresses that, the government should do all she can to produce a business friendly environment and simplify procedures to help lower the cost of operation of our industries such as reviewing and revision of the current policy that would likely suffocate the sustainable development of the industry. For example implying Tax Law no. 39E to local firms that transcends from processing from supplied materials to processing with imported materials, which does not offer depreciation allowance to the machinery used. Also another unfavourable legislation that is detrimental to the restructuring of industrial development is the arrangement of not using 50:50 ratio for calculating Profits Tax. Moreover, it is important to relax the 183-days Taxation Agreement with the Mainland government in order to facilitate the flow of people between the two regions.