Hong Kong is still thriving and vibrant, and has yet to explore and realise enormous potential, according to Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa. Mr Tung was speaking at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC) in Hong Kong on 16 May.

During his speech Mr Tung addressed the “mixed bag” of assessment reports about Hong Kong recently published by a number of international rating agencies and consulting agencies. They included reports from Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and an article in Fortune magazine.

Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s reached positive conclusions on Hong Kong’s economic outlook, financial position and overall stability, while the EIU and IMD lowered the territory’s placing in the global business environment and competitiveness rankings.

“We will take comments and criticism in the spirit that good ratings are encouragement for us to do better and unfair criticisms are reminders that we must keep up the effort and continue to do better,” said Mr Tung. “Those who have written us off in the past have proved to be well off the mark, just as those who criticised us unfairly have been proven wrong.”

Commenting on Fortune magazine’s recent article, “Who needs Hong Kong?” Mr Tung said that the 3,200 foreign multinational companies using Hong Kong as their regional operations answered this question. He also said that the IMD report, in which Hong Kong’s competitiveness ranking dropped from six to nine, was due mainly to the sharp slow-down in the economy which was mainly due to external factors over which Hong Kong had no control.