Latest news with #Greater Bay Area
South China Morning Post
6 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong urged to make itself ‘truly the world's green financial centre'
Hong Kong is poised to play an invaluable role in sustainable development by capitalising on its strengths in green finance given mainland China's status as a leader in advanced green technologies, a top American economist has said. Advertisement Jeffrey Sachs, an economics professor and director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, also said on Thursday that the Greater Bay Area was superior to Silicon Valley. Beijing should also speed up the internationalisation of the renminbi, he said. 'The role of Hong Kong in sustainable development is becoming central for the whole world,' Sachs said at an event hosted by the newly formed Hong Kong Association for External Friendship, a non-governmental organisation. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by all of its member states in 2015, are a set of 17 global targets aimed at ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all by 2030. Sachs said China had a unique role to play in driving sustainable development as it was the world's largest industrial nation and the 'lowest-cost producer' of advanced green and digital technology. Advertisement Hong Kong's role, in turn, was to provide the financing needed and serve as a bridge that connected the world through bond issuances, listings and finding business partners.
South China Morning Post
7 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Imported workers ‘lifeline' for struggling Hong Kong restaurants: trade chiefs
Restaurant industry leaders have defended Hong Kong's labour importation scheme as a crucial 'lifeline' for their struggling sector, arguing that it injects much-needed new blood and improves service standards rather than taking jobs from local workers. They also dismissed accusations that operators were using the scheme to hire cheap labour, insisting the total cost of employing an imported worker, including accommodation and medical expenses, was higher than for a local employee. Their backing on Wednesday followed a wave of restaurant closures and concern over rising unemployment in the catering industry, which has been hit hard by a shift in consumer habits and a persistent manpower crunch since the pandemic. 'If we had been able to import labour sooner, I believe the recent wave of closures could have been avoided,' legislator Tommy Cheung Yu-yan, who represents the catering sector, said at a briefing. He argued that sufficient manpower was key to improving service and food quality, which had fallen behind competitors in the Greater Bay Area. The city's supplementary labour scheme was expanded last year to cover 26 roles, including waiters and junior chefs, in a bid to ease chronic staff shortages.
