As Hong Kong's population ages, people's worrying lack of retirement funds is akin to a ticking time bomb, according to financial services pundits.
And to offset a potential crisis, the government needs to introduce a tax incentive to encourage Hong Kong's workforce to make voluntary contributions to their Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF).
'A move towards such a policy would encourage people to save more for their retirement,' says Billy Wong, vice-president - institutional business development, pension services, with pension administrator BestServe Financial.
'The culture in Hong Kong is such that people focus on the short term and, even with their MPF investments, tend to favour risky investment strategies.'
It appears that Hong Kong is headed towards a crisis. By almost any objective measure it can count itself among those countries often referred to as mature economies. Yet, there is one area in which Hong Kong glaringly lags and that is the failure of its people to adequately prepare for their financial retirement.
A survey by investment product and service provider Fidelity International reveals that Hong Kong has the lowest 'readiness' figure among mature economies surveyed by Fidelity's affiliates, ranking just below Japan at 47 per cent, and well behind the United States, Germany, Britain and Canada at 58, 56, 50 and 50 per cent, respectively.