WHEN Hong Kong goes hunting for hi-tech corporations to set up in the territory, it wields the simple and straight arrow of free enterprise. Singapore uses a battle tank, bristling with weapons designed to hook its targets.
Tax incentives, grants, training schemes, innovation subsidies, land deals - all are brought to bear on potential investors in the republic. Singapore will even wheel out a government company, happy to enter into a joint venture, contributing to the costs and splitting the rewards.
Hong Kong's system has obvious merits: according to Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen the territory's uncluttered system of low tax, no interference has given it the edge as a location for regional headquarters by foreign companies - he estimates the territory leads by three to one.
When it comes to electronics in general, and wafer plants in particular there is no doubt who leads in the manufacturing of the hi-tech basic building blocks of the data processing industry.
Motorola's decision to base a wafer fabrication plant in the territory leaves the score at Hong Kong 1, Singapore 5, with at least a further four in what will just be the next wave.
Even the territory's one success prompted a Singapore-based industry analyst to ask: 'Why would anyone want to put a wafer fab plant there?' In investment terms, the estimated HK$4 billion which Motorola plans to spend goes up against the current US$14 billion plus which the republic has already attracted, and it is only just warming up.
