Letters | By going digital, Hong Kong can shape the future trade landscape
- Readers discuss what Hong Kong should focus on as it seeks to develop the digital economy, and tech glitches when using government platforms
To be fair, an early blueprint does not guarantee success. And perhaps a late start will allow us to benefit from others’ lessons and to proceed with more focus.
We think the focus should be on areas of strength where business readiness is high, notably finance and trade and logistics which together account for about 45 per cent of the city’s gross domestic product.
On finance, we are in good hands with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s fintech strategy launched in 2021. On trade, Hong Kong made a decent start with the trade single window, updated in its second phase last May.
But today trade is being driven by new factors which weren’t around when the single window was conceived.
The first is the geopolitics around trade which mandates traceability within supply chains, especially for products entering the US and Europe. The only way to establish robust traceability is to digitalise and track key points across the entire chain.
The second is the need for speed, occasioned by the rise of mobile and e-commerce. While it is difficult to manufacture or sail ships faster, we can reduce administrative clearance time by digitalising key trade documents and securing the data chain. Traders in the UK have experienced versions of this – with border processing time reduced 80 per cent following the introduction of the Electronic Trade Documents Act in September 2023.
For similar reasons, the French legislature has conducted hearings on legislation to legalise the use of electronic records in trade, while individual US states are considering amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code to allow the same.
What does this mean for Hong Kong? The Electronic Transactions Ordinance was recently amended to allow government notices to be sent electronically. Why not give business the same support by protecting trade documentation in digital formats?
This could be done by aligning with the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records under the UN Commission on International Trade Law. Putting MLETR on the legislative agenda would send a clear signal to business to make the transition, for instance, to use electronic bills of lading. It would keep Hong Kong in step with the mainland, which is already experimenting with an MLETR pilot in Shanghai, and whose civil servants have been studying MLETR for more than a year, in a programme funded by the Asian Development Bank.
Nine economies have aligned with MLETR globally, with many others – Japan, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia and Mexico – readying themselves for the digital trade era through MLETR. Going digital will boost trade for Hong Kong and position it to shape the future trade landscape.
Pamela Mar, managing director, ICC Digital Standards Initiative, and Marjorie Yang, chairman, Esquel Group
Improve tech interfaces across government departments
In my attempt to polish my tennis skills, I recently tried to book a tennis court through the Leisure and Cultural Services Department’s system. I was surprised to keep getting a “time conflict” error and then a “booking limits” message although I had not booked anything yet.
After experiencing the first two issues, I called the hotline. I would expect the hotline to offer the simplest, state-of-the-art means of solving problems. However, after I selected English, it instructed me to either leave a voice message or press “*” to talk to an operator. I chose “*”, which led to an infinite loop of errors as the system repeated the same message to leave a voice message or press “*”. The next morning, I tried the hotline again, selected Chinese and someone answered, suggesting different working hours for English-speaking and Cantonese-speaking operators.
Writing this, my first letter to the Post, costs me time but underscores my commitment to a city pitching itself as a world-class hub for business. The recurring technology mishaps, including comically faulty phone help, paint a worrying picture of our infrastructure’s readiness to support our city’s claim of being world-class.
The Hong Kong government does run some reasonably workable online platforms, like the “iAM Smart” initiative. However, the contrasting qualities of systems across various departments imply a lack of shared intelligence, best practices or coordination by centralised experts.
While using taxpayer money, each department seems to embark on a process of trial and error. Errors are acceptable, but on the road to recovery – both in terms of business confidence and the ability to attract expats or foreign direct investment to Hong Kong – the room for trial and error is not as vast as mine in booking a tennis court or the exam authority’s in its roll-call system.
Leo Lee, Ho Man Tin
