Hong Kong sees blue skies ahead, 3 surveys reveal
Hongkongers are becoming increasingly confident in the robustness of the city's economic recovery, with three separate surveys showing both businesses and employees are feeling positive about 2005.
The surveys - two focusing on businesses and one on employee sentiment - show that many expect some tempering of growth as the year unfolds, but most remain upbeat about their prospects.
Only in the manufacturing, construction and transport sectors was there any negative sentiment, with the Census and Statistics Department's quarterly business expectations survey showing a persistent level of pessimism in the three areas.
Respondents from the construction industry were particularly downbeat about their prospects, with 24 per cent expecting a worsening of the situation against just 4 per cent who thought things would improve.
However, the negative sentiment was heavily outweighed by overwhelmingly positive results received from tourism and personal services-related firms.
In the financial and insurance sector, 60 per cent of respondents saw blue skies ahead, while just 1 per cent did not.
It was a similar story in the restaurant and hotel, wholesale and retail, and property, business services and telecommunications sectors, where positive sentiment far exceeded the negative.
'You can see that global economic growth and Hong Kong economic growth have been quite strong in recent months and this has made people a bit more positive,' said Hong Kong Productivity Council general manager Vincent Li Kai-lun, whose organisation yesterday issued its own survey showing improving levels of sentiment among small and medium-sized enterprises (SME).
The HKPC's Business Operating Environment Survey covered 556 SMEs, 305 of which were from the services sector with the rest engaged in manufacturing.
It showed the number of respondents feeling upbeat about first-quarter prospects outweighed those who did not by 14 percentage points, an increase of 6 percentage points on the results of its October 2004 survey.
But while businesses are looking forward to an improvement in their financial well-being, they should bear in mind that their employees are most likely doing the same after a prolonged period with little improvement in wages.
An online survey of 956 full- and part-time employees conducted by market information consultants TNS revealed that 36 per cent were expecting a pay rise this year.
And perhaps of more concern for employers was the fact the survey found just 57 per cent of respondents were satisfied with their jobs.
