WE HAVE A NEW big study from the Government billed as a ground-breaking five-year plan to revolutionise logistics in Hong Kong and we are told we had better adopt it or Shanghai and Singapore will leave us in the dust.
Fill in the blanks. B--ls--t.
The study, carried out by foreign consultants, is an outcome of some thoughts on logistics that Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa featured in his 1999 Policy Address. Logistics, in case you wondered, is a fancy word for getting goods from the factory to the retail shelves. In any event, Mr Tung decided he was all in favour of logistics, probably because the word has a nice high-technology ring to it. He is a big expert on hi-tech, as we all know, and has taken it on himself to decide that hi-tech is our future. Me? Lo-tech every time, thank you. I like things that make money and sense.
You will not be surprised to discover that the big 130-page study reveals Mr Tung as a prophet ahead of his time. Let us all bow down in awe. He foresaw its findings that the logistics business in Hong Kong is much too piecemeal at the moment, does not make proper use of the Internet and needs Government to fix things if Hong Kong is to become an important logistics hub. What prescience.
Of course, you may wonder what that makes us at the moment. Is Hong Kong not already the biggest Asian logistics hub leave alone one of the biggest in the world?
The latest figures say that our container throughput is now 15 per cent greater than Singapore's, our air cargo throughput 34 per cent greater and in both cases the margin is widening fast. Hong Kong's air cargo throughput is greater than all of the mainland's. Shanghai is barely an also ran in both container traffic and air cargo. What is this about 'will' become or 'can' become? We are.
