Hong Kong government stresses importance of sustainable development of human capital

By eGovAsia Editors | Dec 13, 2010

Thumbnail: 

HONG KONG - The Hong Kong government is giving great importance to promoting the sustainable development of human capital in the face of increasingly fierce global competition and a fast-changing world, the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr. Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, said last week.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 30th Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management Annual Conference "Championing HR Fitness for the Next Decade",  Cheung said people are the most valuable asset of any society.

"This is particularly true for Hong Kong, where people are our only natural resources," he said, adding that education was one of the most important tools for equipping the workforce.

Education takes up 23.4 percent of the government's total recurrent expenditure, the largest share among all policy areas.

"Our heavy investment in education is paying handsome dividends. Two of our 13 universities were ranked among the top 50 in the world in 2010 by the Times Higher Education Supplement, with another two within the top 200. In the QS Asian University Rankings 2010, the University of Hong Kong ranked first, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology second and the Chinese University of Hong Kong came fourth," he said.

Apart from nurturing local talent, as an international, pluralistic and open economy, Hong Kong welcomes people with valuable skills, knowledge or experience from all over the world to work and live here. 

"Over 270,000 talented people and professionals have been admitted since 1997," Cheung said.

To enable those already in the workforce to upgrade themselves and keep pace with the changing demands of the job market, Cheung explained that a wide range of training and retraining courses were offered by the Employees Retraining Board, the Vocational Training Council and the Construction Industry Council Training Academy.

Moreover, a total of $6.2 billion has been injected into the Continuing Education Fund since 2002 to foster continuing education and promote life-long learning of our workforce, benefiting over 540,000 persons so far, said Cheung.