How Hong Kong’s 5-year plan can fuel its financial clout

Finance ministers from 21 Asia-Pacific economies recently met in Hong Kong, the first time the city has hosted them. A practical question sits one level down.

Picture the treasury team of a company running its regional business from Hong Kong. It arranges funding in several currencies, pays across markets and manages the risks that follow. Its question is: how can Hong Kong’s services help it operate more efficiently and at lower cost?

Those needs are a practical lens for reading the five-year plan and the chief executive’s policy address. The plan sets the direction; the address puts dates on it. In our research exchanges with think tanks on the mainland and in Hong Kong, the same concerns come up: not more products but what makes products usable – settlement, term funding and collateral. The plan’s mention of “a capable government working in tandem with an effective market” frames market development as a shared endeavour.