|
Trade and Industry Department
Performance Pledge
The Trade and Industry Department is responsible for conducting Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's international trade relations, implementing trade policies and agreements, as well as providing general support services for industries and small and medium enterprises.
A Review of 2007
Meeting the Pledge
- In 2007, we promulgated performance targets for a total of 38 service items.
- We regularly carried out random surveys on our licensing/certification services to monitor whether the standard of our services met our performance targets during the past year. The findings revealed that our compliance rate is 100%.
- As for the services related to the certification of Hong Kong service suppliers under the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), we were able to achieve 100% compliance.
- For services provided by our Support and Consultation Centre for SMEs (SUCCESS), our compliance rate was 100% for all items.
- As for the SME funding schemes, we were able to achieve 99.6% and 100% compliance in respect of the applications for the SME Loan Guarantee Scheme and SME Development Fund respectively. As regards the SME Export Marketing Fund, our compliance rate was 97.2%. The pledge could not be met during the peak months when the caseload exceeded the full capacity of the EMF Unit.
Advice and Feedback
- We attach great importance to advice and feedback from our advisors and customers. In 2007, we continued to work closely with our advisors, namely, the Textiles Advisory Board, the Trade and Industry Advisory Board, the SME Committee, to seek their advice on important issues and on ways to continually improve our services.
- We also kept in touch with the four Customer Liaison Groups, each catering for a specific group of customers (i.e. textiles traders, strategic commodities traders, SMEs and rice traders), to obtain useful feedback and suggestions on the services provided.
Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement
- After the full implementation of the liberalisation measures under Supplement III to CEPA on 1 January 2007, Supplement IV to CEPA was signed on 29 June 2007 comprising 40 liberalisation measures in 28 service areas. Starting from 1 January 2008, Hong Kong service suppliers can enjoy preferential access to the Mainland market in 38 service areas. The number of products with CEPA rules of origin agreed has also been increased to 1502.
Strategic Commodities
- We launched a new trade facilitation scheme called the "Approval-in-Principal Arrangement for Bulk Users of Strategic Commodities Licensing Service" in July 2007 with a view to further streamlining licensing procedures and expediting processing time for certain frequent and qualified users of licensing service for strategic commodities.
Application of Information Technology
- The electronic "On-line Application for Factory Registration" service was launched in March 2007. We shall continue to improve and enhance the service in 2008.
2008 Pledge
- The performance pledge of the Trade and Industry Department for 2008 is at Annex (pdf format). As part of our continued efforts to improve our service, we have shortened the processing time for one service item and introduced target for two new service items.
Trade and Industry Department
4 February 2008
|
