Blog

My first official visit to Israel

A gist of the blog:

This week, I am leading a four-day business mission to Israel to strengthen business and economic ties between Hong Kong and Israel, and seek closer collaboration on the innovation and technology front. The delegation is comprised of more than 30 business leaders representing companies in the fields of financial services, venture capital investment, biotechnology, Fintech and smart city development. Representatives from the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park and Cyberport are also joining the mission.

We will visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and attend a briefing by the Israeli Government on business opportunities in Israel and meet the representatives of the local business sector. While in Tel Aviv, I will speak at the 6th Annual Summit for business with China to showcase Hong Kong's unique strengths which make us the ideal platform for enterprises in seizing new opportunities under the Belt and Road Initiative.

After five years of exploration and implementation, the Belt and Road Initiative is beginning to bear fruit and will continue to bring tangible benefits to the local communities. As a leading global financial centre, Hong Kong can serve our motherland’s needs with our unique strengths, and be the financing hub for the Belt and Road projects. We can provide diversified financing means and solutions to mitigate investment risk, enhancing projects’ commercial attractiveness and facilitating early completion of these projects for improving people’s livelihood.

Established two years ago, the HKMA Infrastructure Financing Facilitation Office (IFFO) is providing a platform to channel international funds to profitable and valuable infrastructure projects and bridge the funding gap for these projects. With the support of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the HKMA is now in discussions with some Central State-owned Enterprises to explore opportunities for cooperation and joint investment in overseas projects with stable return, in the form of equity investment. The Securities and Futures Commission also issued last year a statement setting out factors relating to the listing of infrastructure project companies in Hong Kong.

September 2, 2018