Annual Report 2014-15

6 FHKI Annual Report 2014-15 Chairman’s statement 主席報告 The FHKI believes that design, creativity and technology can help conventional industries to move up the value-chain. During the year, we have successfully secured support from the Government and the LegCo to amend the FHKI Ordinance to set up five new groups. The new groups covering “Creative industries”, “Design” and “Automation solutions” will no doubt have a lot of synergy with members of the existing industry groups, bringing in new possibilities and capabilities to help upgrade traditional industrial operations. The FHKI is also mindful of the need to enhance our service to conventional industries. Hence, new industry groups for “Fur and leather garments” and “Spectacles and optical products” have been set up to serve these two sectors which are both leading world exporters. So far, with the addition of these five groups, we have successfully brought around 130 new members into the FHKI family. Assisting members in opening up the Mainland domestic market has been one of our focus areas in recent years. The FHKI has successfully secured some $17million from the Government under the Dedicated Fund on Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales (BUD) to pursue five projects, namely hosting a Hong Kong Pavilion in the Die and Mould Zone at Chinaplas for three years, a study on the supply chain of fast moving consumer goods in Guangdong, encouraging the toy industry to upgrade and to open up the Mainland market through showcasing Hong Kong designed toys in five Mainland cities, implementing a training programme on e-commerce for domestic sales, and promoting Q-Mark products in the Mainland. The former four projects have been successfully completed and the last project will be completed by January 2016. Different events like seminars, workshops, exhibitions, competitions were held under these five projects and they took place not only in Hong Kong, but also in Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Changsha and Guangzhou. Very good feedback has been received from participants. The FHKI will continue to work with different industry groups to pursue new BUD projects in future. Meanwhile, we continued with our efforts in lobbying both the Hong Kong and Mainland governments on issues of concern to the industries and the business community. Building on our close relationship with the government authorities, we have had some success in shaping relevant policies. The Guangdong Province’s legislation on collective contracts has been an issue of grave concern to Hong Kong enterprises operating in the Mainland, ever since the start of public consultation in October 2013. The FHKI leadership had rounds of discussions with Huang Yebin, Vice-President of Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress and Chairman of the Guangdong Confederation of Labour Union, reflecting our concerns on the potential worsening of the employer-employee relationship and increase in labour disputes as a result of the new legislation. The promulgated legislation has taken into account some of our concerns and has adjusted a number of most objectionable clauses. For example, instead of the original requirement on enterprises to disclose confidential business information for the purpose of collective bargaining on wages, under the promulgated law, enterprises are only required to provide information that is relevant to the negotiation. The threshold to trigger the collective bargaining process was also raised from one-third to 50 per cent of all workers. Another issue we acted on relates to the adjustment to the list of prohibited imports and exports for the purpose of the processing trade. In September 2014, the Central Government announced that certain items of stainless steel and raw fur materials would be put on the list of prohibited imports and exports. Such a move would substantially increase the costs of Hong Kong companies belonging to the related sectors. In response, I led relevant industry representatives to Beijing and Guangdong to meet with officials of the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs and Guangdong Sub-Administration of China Customs to reflect our concerns. We are pleased that the ministries concerned have taken heed of our views. “Dressed skin” of fur materials was taken out from the prohibited list and a longer transition period was given for other items before full-fledged implementation of the new prohibitions.