HONGKONG Bank's Paul Selway-Swift is right on the money with his concerns about spiralling inflation, and the Government would do well to listen.
He said high staff turnover and human resource units that work on 'cost plus inflation plus a bit more' were not helping the territory.
He said that unless human resource units delivered the goods to management, then the territory's recent recognition as one of the most competitive economies in the world would quickly be forgotten.
Measure Hong Kong's price trend against prices in the Group of Seven industrialised nations and the numbers bear him out.
The G7 averages 1.95 per cent annually - Hong Kong's official consumer price index (A) is a year-to-date 8.1 per cent, and anecdotal evidence suggests that any single digit inflation number from Hong Kong is suspect.
Even if the official 8.1 per cent is accepted, Hong Kong is losing ground against emerging markets and developed countries as the territory's inflation gallops away.