A container ship sails under the Stonecutters Bridge near Kwai Tsing Container Terminals in Hong Kong on May 14, 2019. (PHILIP FONG / AFP)
The future of Hong Kong’s shipping industry lies in extending the traditional container business to high value-added logistics services, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said in his blog on Sunday.
About 900 shipping-related companies in Hong Kong are currently providing a wide range of maritime services, Chan said, adding that the merchant fleet owned and managed by Hong Kong shipowners and ship management companies accounts for one-tenth of the global total by gross deadweight, making the city the fourth-largest shipping registry place in the world.
About 900 shipping-related companies in Hong Kong are currently providing a wide range of maritime services, Chan said, adding that the merchant fleet owned and managed by Hong Kong shipowners and ship management companies accounts for one-tenth of the global total by gross deadweight, making the city the fourth-largest shipping registry place in the world
He also cited Hong Kong’s shipping finance, insurance, and professional arbitration service as the maritime industry’s well-established strength.
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On top of a string of tax incentives introduced by the special administrative region government, the country’s steady economic growth and increasing export demands are a boon for Hong Kong’s high-value-added maritime services as well, he said.
Chan said the city also has a leading edge on the air-logistics front, adding that the synergy between Hong Kong’s aviation, maritime, and land transport will strengthen through enhancing collaboration with the rest of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
A case in point is the “sea-air cargo transshipment” between Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) and the rest of the Greater Bay Area. The Airport Authority Hong Kong will also set up an upstream HKIA Logistics Park in Dongguan, Guangdong province, and an airside intermodal cargo handling facility at HKIA.
Chan said this will allow export cargo from the Chinese mainland to complete security screening in advance and then be transported seamlessly to the HKSAR. It will then be directly transhipped to all overseas destinations through Hong Kong’s international aviation network without the need to undergo further security screening.
“Similarly, international cargo can also be imported into the Chinese mainland through the reverse process,” Chan said.
The HKSAR will speed up the promotion of logistics information connectivity in the Greater Bay Area, improve transport synergy and encourage the logistics sector’s stakeholders to further adopt technological applications to enhance productivity, Chan said.
