British Chamber Submission Papers

GBA Position Paper 1

The Greater Bay Area initiative (“GBA”) has generated a great deal of interest amongst the British Chamber of Commerce members. We have been hosting a series of events and round-tables exploring the opportunities and the barriers for successful implementation that some of you will have attended. In addition, we formed the Greater Bay Area British Business Network last year in partnership with the British Chambers in southern China and Macao, the Confederation of British Industry and the Mainland China Britain Business Council. The focus of the network is to exchange information and coordinate our work on GBA, which is one of our top priorities for the next 12-24 months.

Following the request last year by the Chief Executive for the business community to actively provide input, the Chamber has recently submitted our first position paper to the Secretary for Constitutional & Mainland Affairs which sets out the thinking of BritCham Hong Kong. It consists of both broad cross-cutting themes and detailed recommendations. This position paper is an initial paper and focuses on recommendations for five key sectors: financial services, logistics, healthcare, education as well as energy and environment. Covid-19 is forcing us all to reappraise the importance of IT and digital technologies in every aspect of life and for this reason we envisage sharing our thinking on this and other sectors with the government later this year.

We will continue to provide further updates on our dialogue with government in due course.

Click here to read the full paper

 

GBA Position Paper 2

We shared our first position paper on the GBA in July 2020, covering five key sectors (financial services; logistics; healthcare; education and environment). We subsequently held a very constructive meeting with the Chief Executive and other colleagues to discuss that paper in early September.

We have since sent a second GBA position paper to the Chief Executive which covers the following areas/sectors – Real Estate, Construction and Infrastructure; Information and Technology; SMEs; Retail and Hospitality; Professional Services; Dispute Resolution; and Diversity and Inclusion. As with our first paper, we have included some general commentary together with some specific actionable recommendations for the Government’s consideration drawing from the collective broad experience and expertise of our membership.

We have requested a further meeting with the Chief Executive and members of her cabinet to discuss. We will continue to provide updates on our dialogue with the Government in due course.

In the meantime, the full paper can be found here. 

 

2022 BritCham Submission on Personal Data Privacy Ordinance

24/06/2022

The purpose of this Submission on behalf of the Data Governance Working Group of the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong is respectfully to encourage the Privacy Commissioner to develop as an urgent priority Hong Kong’s data laws along the following lines:

1. Implementation of the remainder of the areas of modernisation of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (“PDPO”) as brought before LegCo in January 2020;
2. bringing into force Section 33 PDPO;
3. engagement with other Greater Bay Area authorities to drive cross-border exchanges of data (whether through sandboxes, certified usage or otherwise); and
4. at the same time, preserving the essence of data protection laws, namely to enhance consumers’ and individuals’ ability to control their data use (rather than data laws acting as instruments of control).

Click here to read the full submission.

British Chamber 2022 Policy Address Submission

01/08/2022

On Monday 01 August, the Chamber issued its annual Policy Address Submission which outlines the Chamber’s key priority policy recommendations for the Chief Executive and his administration.

Our theme for this year’s Submission is “Five Steps to Plan Ahead for a Better Tomorrow”, and we have grouped our comments and recommendations under headings as follows:

- Rebuilding the economy and enabling longer term structural change;
- Closer economic cooperation with the opportunities of the Mainland;
- Focusing on change in the public sector;
- Improving livelihoods in a more liveable city; and
- Ensuring that Hong Kong’s distinctiveness is maintained and positively promoted.

We believe that a focus on these areas will position Hong Kong strongly as we emerge from COVID and open up to the world again to re-establish Hong Kong as Asia’s leading international financial and trading hub, and reinforce Hong Kong’s reputation as an attractive place to live and work.

Click here to view the document.