HK to invest 20 bln HK dollars in human capital

HONG KONG, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong will invest nearly 20 billion HK dollars (2.5 billion U.S. dollars) into human capital, boosting job opportunities, education and the workforce, said John Tsang, financial secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, here Wednesday.

Tsang outlined three major initiatives to enhance the city's workforce and education, when delivering the 2008-09 Budget at theLegislative Council, including youth employment, research and development and the import of talent.

A provision of one billion HK dollars (129 million U.S. dollars) will be made over the next three years to create 3,000 three-year jobs for young people.

"Young people are the driving force for the future development of the community. I hope unemployed youths can obtain work experience and enhance their job-related skills to provide a solid foundation for future development," Tsang said.

He proposed two measures to provide more diversified research and development activities to sustain economic growth and enhance competitiveness.

The first is to provide 800 additional publicly-funded places for postgraduate research programs in phases from the 2009-10 school year, which will incur additional expenditure of nearly 300million HK dollars (38.6 million U.S. dollars) annually.

Second, Tsang intended to provide a one-off grant of 18 billion HK dollars (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) to establish a Research Endowment Fund. The fund and its investment earnings will replace the annual funding granted by the Government to the Research Grant Council of the University Grants Committee. Part of the funds will be used to finance research projects on specific themes.

Tsang said as the aging population will impose limitations on production capacity, Hong Kong must woo more talented people from the Chinese Mainland and overseas to nourish the economy and improve the population structure.

Tsang pledged to make better use of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices around the world to enhance the external promotion of talent-admission schemes and the arrangements for non-local students to work in Hong Kong.