Hong Kong to chase data - Eye On Hong Kong - disaster recovery systems; Invest Hong Kong

Business Asia, Dec, 2002

Hong Kong is keen to position itself as an ideal back-up data centre for organisations globally as the importance of disaster recovery systems increases, Invest Hong Kong's associate director general John Rutherford says.

Hong Kong, which has been busy trying to identify new growth areas as more and more businesses bypass it and head directly to the Chinese mainland, is an ideal place to store back-up data, according to Rutherford. Rutherford is in charge of attracting and retaining foreign direct investment in the IT; telecommunications, media and multimedia; technology (electronics and biotechnology); and the tourism and entertainment sectors at Invest Hong Kong.

"I think disaster recovery is an area that we have to look at harder," Rutherford says. "After 11 September, companies all over the world are saying that we need to have a back-up, and are asking where is it safe to put that back-up? I would argue that there's not many more safer places than Hong Kong."

Apart from the security angle, it is Hong Kong's advanced telecommunications infrastructure that makes it an ideal data centre, Rutherford says.

"We liberalised our telecoms industry far ahead of other people. Broadband take up is tremendous--it's in over a third of households," he said. "The infrastructure in place there is tremendous."

Prime target

Rutherford says Australia is a prime target for Invest Hong Kong as it has an impressive list of young, up and coming technology companies. It is these companies that Rutherford says Hong is keen to have within its borders.

"I honestly believe that the technology being produced in Australia is the equivalent of what I was seeing in Silicon Valley in the mid-'90s," he said. "Now what we have to do is target Australia from a Hong Kong point of view--so far, we haven't done that much, to tell you the truth, on the ITC side.

"We're not looking at taking an Australian company and saying right, relocate to Hong Kong. What we're doing is taking a strong Australian company and say to them that we'll help you expand your business. So it's good for Australia and for Hong Kong."

Hong Kong ranked the best-performing Investment site in Asia

Hong Kong was named as the best-performing host economy for foreign direct investment (FDI) in Asia according to the World Investment Report 2002, released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Hong Kong holds the second place in the global rankings after Belgium/Luxembourg.

In its benchmark study, UNCTAD measured an economy's performance by standardising FDI inflows to the size of the economy and assessed its investment potential by using a set of economic and policy factors of importance to foreign investors. Taken together, the Inward FDI Performance and Inward FDI Potential Indices developed by UNCTAD, show how countries are performing relative to their investment potential.

On a global scale, Hong Kong ranked 10th in FDI inflows in 2001, with the US and UK as the top and second largest recipients respectively, and Mainland the sixth.