Day 1 - Hong Kong Trade Development Council

After lunch, we headed over the the Hong Kong Trade Development Centre. Our first reaction when we alighted the bus was that the weather was freaking cold! It was like walking around in an air-conditioned room with the cold air blowing in your face! These are my groupmates, from left, Yong Wei, myself, Edward, Christine, Glenda and Tiffany, we were given about 15 minutes or so for photo-taking before we entered the main office. This was the site where the Hong Kong Handover Ceremony took place in July 1st 1997.

We were greeted by Ms. Emily Cheung, Corporate Relations Executive of HKTDC. She gave us an overview into the operations of the HKTDC. The services the HKTDC provides businesses, in particular, Small and Medium Sized (SMEs), with a wide range of practical, relevant services that are easy to access and easy to use, and with targeted promotional activities in international markets. Many TDC services are provided for free.

After the briefing and the Q and A session, Ms. Cheung showed us around the building and within the building, there are souvenir shops that has set up their operations within the TDC building, where such shops are given special previlages, such has having their tax on porfits being absorbed by the TDC.

We were than given a tour of the library and were shown the facilities it has. It is a two-storey library with a wide range of facilities, such as internet login points, printing and photocopying services and a wide range of catalogues for businesses to utilise.

In particular, businesses that are targeting to enter the Pearl River Delta region through Hong Kong, there is a specific section that has information regarding China Trade and Investment resources. In that section, people can find information on the Laws and regulations for foreign companies operating in China, guidebooks on import and export procedures, trading guidebooks on the Chinese Market and telephone directories on businesses operating in china.

There is also a section containing entirely statistics of everything related to the Chinese Market and the business environment. Information in that section are sorted according to type of statistics, statistics specific to provinces and statistics specific to Industries, suited to businesses’ needs, depending on what type of information they are looking for.