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Monitor

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Why you can trust SCMP
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I WORKED FOR the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) for four years before accepting this newspaper's offer to man its Guangzhou bureau.

The Economist Intelligence University - as I preferred to think of it - was a fabulous place to work. The benefits included great colleagues, an emphasis on quality over quantity that I wish more employers would emulate, and long sessions at Time After Time, the EIU's post-production Wan Chai watering hole and by far the best little bar in Hong Kong.

So I have followed the recent ruckus kicked up by the EIU in Hong Kong with much interest. It began last Friday when Ken Davies, the EIU's chief economist for Asia and my former boss, announced that it was cutting Hong Kong's gross domestic product growth forecast this year from 2.4 per cent to 0.7 per cent.

Before the dust had settled from that shock, on Monday the EIU said it expected Hong Kong to slip from the No 3 slot in its 1996-2000 Global Business Environment Rankings to No 10 for the 2001-2005 period.

Rubbing salt into the wound, the EIU notes that Hong Kong will be 'the only country [sic] where the business environment is expected to deteriorate in absolute as well as relative terms'.

Asked about the downgrade, Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung said the EIU was being 'unduly pessimistic'.

Mr Leung was asked for his reaction to the EIU downgrade, and far be it for a journalist to encourage a high-ranking government official not to answer questions from the press. However, government officials seem to have acquired the ungracious habit of rushing headlong to Hong Kong's defence after every perceived slight to its honour. Over the past year, other senior government officials including the likes of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and then financial secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen have also gone out of their way to issue lengthy rebuttals of other EIU downgrades.

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