HONG KONG, July 9 (Xinhua) -- Large international companies are desirous to take the innovation opportunities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), said a Hong Kong official in a recent interview with Xinhua.
The GBA development is obviously a very big opportunity and many companies are keen to understand how they can leverage that, said Stephen Phillips, Director-General of Investment Promotion at Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government.
With dynamic population, world-class innovative companies and fantastic opportunities, the GBA will be a real growth engine in the years to come, he noted.
According to him, great efforts have been taken to attract some big international companies to set up new research and development (R&D) facilities in Hong Kong.
"We continue to talk to investors about the opportunities that Hong Kong offers and most of them in the medium- and long-term remain quite optimistic," said Phillips.
It's learned that as a department responsible for attracting foreign direct investment and supporting overseas and Chinese mainland businesses to set up or expand in Hong Kong, InvestHK had assisted 487 companies from overseas and the Chinese mainland to set up or expand in Hong Kong in 2019, up 11.7 percent year on year.
The new growth opportunities, Phillips said, lie in Hong Kong's innovation agenda, the GBA, and more broadly, Asia.
The GBA is seen as a phenomenal opportunity that captures the imagination of companies around the world, while Asia will continue to be the engine of global economic growth, noted he.
Given the geographical location of Hong Kong, an interplay is expected between Hong Kong's development in Fintech, biotech, smart city, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other innovation areas, and the opportunities within the GBA, across China and also other parts of Asia, Phillips pointed out.
"When you look towards the horizon, companies are still very interested in coming to Hong Kong and using Hong Kong to access the GBA and the wider markets of Asia," he said.
There are so many opportunities for international companies entering the Chinese mainland through Hong Kong or Chinese mainland companies taking Hong Kong as a stepping stone to reach the rest of the world, he said. "So we'll continue to work really hard to find the win-win situations for everybody."
(Contributed by Zhang Huan, Gao Jie, edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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