Indicator will be used to assess Hong Kong's richness in field of cultural capital
We already have the Hang Seng Index, the Consumer Price Index, the Productivity Index and the Air Pollution Index.
Now for the Creativity Index.
From February, the Home Affairs Department will publish the index to assess Hong Kong's competitiveness in creative industries.
Assistant secretary for home affairs Fong Ngai said the government hoped it would help attract foreign investors to the city's creative industries and help in resource allocation and policy making.
The bureau has commissioned the University of Hong Kong's Centre for Cultural Policy Research to produce the index, based on similar studies by United States scholars. 'We would not like to measure the contribution of creativity purely in monetary terms,' Mr Fong said. 'There are so many indexes to measure the performance of the economy, such as the World Economic Forum's Growth Competitiveness Index. But these cannot satisfy the need to measure the level of creativity in Hong Kong.'
US scholar Richard Florida had used technology, talent and tolerance of creativity as the basis of a creativity index, Mr Fong said. But the university had refined this to measure creativity in terms of capital in human resources, culture, society and institutions.