What we need here is one of those Cecil B. DeMille movies, you know, big Hollywood Bible epics with a cast of thousands - Moses and the Red Tide, Samson Gets a Haircut, that sort of thing, and when the trumpets blare at the big moment, the slaves all bellow out: 'Cepa, sacred Cepa, holy Cepa, all hail the great Cepa!'

It's pretty much where we are right now when our bureaucrats make speeches. Any longer than a few paragraphs and fulsome praise of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, a preferential trade arrangement with the mainland, becomes obligatory. Our government has been making a cult of it for years.

But cults must be able to boast some successes if they are to draw adherents and, unfortunately, the latest boasts fall flat again. They took the form of a survey composed of what appeared to be leading questions to make Cepa look good.

I have to say this tentatively as I haven't seen the survey reports yet. They haven't been published yet. They have been submitted only to Legco's panel on commerce and industry, which will study them closely (how proud their mamas must be of these legislators). We've only been given snippets.

Here is the flavour: 'For trade in goods, 89 per cent of the responding companies considered Cepa beneficial to the Hong Kong economy.'

Cepa reduces or abolishes some mainland tariffs. Find me an exporter anywhere who would consider this a bad thing. Which planet did the remaining 11 per cent of the respondents think they live on?

Here is another gem: 'It was found that Cepa induced additional capital investment in the manufacturing industry in Hong Kong, amounting to HK$305 million in 2005 and 2006.'

Total capital investment in Hong Kong over those two years amounted to HK$610 billion, two thousand times as much.

There is more. These people congratulate themselves on HK$8.3 billion worth of tariff-free exports to the mainland since Cepa went into effect, entirely ignoring the tariff status of the other HK$127 billion of domestic exports that went to the mainland over that period.

They also claim that Cepa created 36,000 jobs in Hong Kong. Nonsense. I call your bluff, gentlemen. Show me your cards.

The chart shows you the facts of the matter. Our exports to the mainland are at about the same level they were 18 years ago - this while the mainland's total imports have risen 15-fold. Talk about loss of market share. What a triumph of trade.

There is no evidence from the figures that our exports to the mainland have risen any faster than our exports to the rest of the world since Cepa went into effect in 2004 and it all pales into insignificance anyway when compared with the rise of our service exports.

But the bureaucrats have finally taken note of our service exports and are now trying to throw the Cepa mantle over these as well. Supplementary agreements will be signed this month, they tell us.

Forget it, fellas. Most of those service exports are already exports to the mainland and you cannot do much for them anyway as there are no tariffs on service exports.

All you can do is push Beijing to allow our lawyers and accountants to set up shop in the mainland. But this doesn't really benefit Hong Kong. Why bother?

Okay, so much for the Cepa trumpets on trade in goods and services. Here is the trumpet tune on investment inflow: 'A total of 603 mainland enterprises were granted approval for coming to invest in Hong Kong between September 2004 and December 2006. The amount of planned investment was US$3.9 billion.'

Oh, so big, so big. The latest figures on our net international investment position say that foreign ownership of Hong Kong assets over this period rose about US$525 billion. So big, so big, and take note that this US$3.9 billion was only planned, not realised, investment.

Would you like a truly big number? Hong Kong entities have assets abroad valued roughly at HK$15.3 trillion, more than 10 times the value of our annual gross domestic product and this is HK$4.1 trillion more than foreigners own of us.

These Cepa people, however, would rather look at pocket change. It's Cecil B. DeMille on the marquee but a home video for the show.