International Trade Centre
114. The National 14th Five-Year Plan supports Hong Kong in enhancing its status as an international trade centre. It also supports Hong Kong's participation in and contribution to our country's comprehensive opening-up and development of a modern economic system. The Report to the 20th National Congress has set out that our country will leverage the strengths of its enormous market to attract global resources and production factors with its strong domestic economy, and amplify the interplay between domestic and international markets and resources, thereby improving the quality and level of trade and investment cooperation.
115. Under our country's new development pattern, we will strengthen our role as a connecting platform for international circulation between our country and the rest of the world. We will also capitalise on the dual engines of the B&R Initiative and the GBA development to facilitate commercial exchanges between the GBA and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), enhance the strategic positioning of both our country and Hong Kong in global and regional economy and trade, and promote our participation in regional economic integration. All these will place us in a better position to cope with the impact of unilateralism and protectionism.
Open up the Mainland Domestic Market
116. We will fully leverage our unique advantages under "One Country, Two Systems", i.e. enjoying strong support of the Motherland while also being closely connected to the rest of the world, in order to consolidate our leading position in global trade. To further integrate into the overall development of our country in order to create strong impetus for our growth, we need to open up the Mainland domestic market internally, and also expand our international economic and trade networks externally. In doing so, we can play our roles as a "participant" in domestic circulation and a "facilitator" in international circulation. In support of the B&R Initiative, we will explore and tap emerging markets such as ASEAN, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa while maintaining ties with the European and American markets.
Strengthening Overseas Economic and Trade Connections
117. On expanding our global economic and trade networks, we have been seeking to enter into free trade agreements (FTAs) and investment agreements (IAs) with more economies. The FTAs and IAs signed by Hong Kong so far have covered most of our major trading partners. We will continue to actively take forward the relevant work, with emerging economies as priority targets to inject new impetus into Hong Kong's trade development. Moreover, we are actively seeking to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in order to further help Hong Kong build a more comprehensive supply chain and attract more Hong Kong enterprises to invest in the member economies of RCEP, with a view to boosting the trade, investment and relevant development in the region, thereby enhancing Hong Kong's status as a regional trade centre.
Open up Target Emerging Markets
118. To further assist Hong Kong enterprises and investors in opening up markets, the Government will provide additional funding of $550 million in total to the HKTDC in the five financial years starting from 2023-24. The additional funding aims to help Hong Kong enterprises seize opportunities arising from the B&R Initiative and the GBA development and tapping into emerging markets as well as stepping up our global promotional efforts.
119. The Dedicated Fund on Branding, Upgrading and Domestic Sales (BUD Fund) has assisted enterprises in exploring markets outside Hong Kong and benefited more than 3 900 enterprises over the years. I propose to further inject $500 million into the fund and, at the same time, launch "BUD Easy" to expedite the processing of applications, enabling more SMEs to make use of the funding to develop their business. In addition, the Hong Kong Productivity Council has been proactively assisting SMEs in applying for government subsidies, which is well received by the industry. I propose to allocate $100 million to enhance this service in the next five years.
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