Safeguarding HK's marine treasures
Opened this year with Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF) backing, Ocean Park's coral exhibition and conservation centre form a vital hub for coral rehabilitation and public education, with the display drawing over a million visitors to date.
News.gov.hk spoke to an ECF representative about the variety of projects it funds, and to a member of Ocean Park's conservation staff about the coral exhibition, while primary school pupils participating in a restoration workshop shared what they had learnt.
The story is available at www.news.gov.hk/eng/feature from today (November 15) in text and video format.
Photo source: news.gov.hk
Speech by Financial Secretary at Hong Kong Global Maritime Trade Summit - Closed-Door Dialogue
Following is the speech by the Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, at the Hong Kong Global Maritime Trade Summit- Closed-Door Dialogue today (November 15):
Mr John Denholm (Chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping), Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to Hong Kong. I thank the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) for bringing this dialogue here for the third year, and all of you for joining us.
When this Summit met a year ago, forecasts pointed to the slowest growth in seaborne trade for years. This year, however, has turned out differently. Last month, the World Trade Organization (WTO) raised its forecast for merchandise trade growth in 2026 from 1.9 per cent to 3.9 per cent. Although crude oil exports from the Middle East fell by about a quarter in the first half of this year, global crude exports declined by only 6 per cent, as alternative suppliers, ports and corridors were identified.
That is a credit to this industry. Ships, ports and their agents and managers adapted faster than any plan could anticipate. Yet much of that adaptation was improvised, voyage by voyage and company by company. The changes now under way are too far-reaching to be managed in this way. The resilience we need has to be organised, and organised together.
A transition that is accelerating
Consider first the map of trade. Trade is becoming more regional, and Asia is leading the change. In the first 10 months of this year, trade between the Chinese Mainland and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) grew by 24per cent to about RMB 7.7 trillion. Around two thirds of this trade was in intermediate goods. They are components on their way to a factory, not products on their way to a shop. Supply chains are being re-aligned across borders rather than simply relocated.
Hong Kong sees this every day. Chinese Mainland companies are extending their production networks across Southeast Asia and the wider Global South, and many run their shipping, insurance and financing operations here in Hong Kong. Our own trade with ASEAN exceeded HK$1.8 trillion in the first nine months of this year, more than in any full year before. For the shipping industry, this means shorter voyages, more frequent calls and more transhipment. It also means that a port will be valued more for the connections and services it offers than the tonnage it handles.
At the same time, the green transition has also kept moving, even when regulation has paused. Negotiations on a global net-zero framework continue. Yet DNV (Det Norske Veritas), the Norwegian classification society, has recorded 364 orders for alternative-fuelled ships so far this year, 57per cent more than a year earlier. Owners clearly regard decarbonisation as a question of when and how, not whether. What they lack is certainty. DNV estimates that demand for low-emission fuels in 2030 could differ by a factor of more than five, depending on which rules are adopted. No producer can secure financing for a fuel plant when the market it would serve is that uncertain.
Hong Kong is doing what a port can do to narrow that uncertainty. Ships took on more than 382 000 tonnes of green maritime fuel, including LNG (liquefied natural gas), biodiesel and green methanol here since last year. The model we are determined to build is green fuel made in the Chinese Mainland, bunkered and traded in Hong Kong, and available to ships of every flag.
Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, is reshaping the maritime industry in two important ways. First, the cargo itself. The WTO estimates that chips, servers and other AI-related goods accounted for nearly half of the growth in the value of world merchandise trade in the first half of this year. Then, it is about how cargo is handled. The Chinese Mainland now has 60 automated terminals, more than any other country, and it aims for 90 by 2030. Yet a recent survey of the terminal industry professionals worldwide found that only 11per cent of respondents regularly measure what AI delivers, with poor data and unconnected systems among the main obstacles.
The constraint is less the algorithm than the data, and in shipping the data sits in many hands. That is why in Hong Kong, we have initiated a Port Community System (PCS). Since January this year, close to 10 000 enterprises have joined. Data entered into the system now serves the customs in both Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland. But every voyage has two ends, and data that stops at the edge of the harbour does only half its work. The UN Trade and Development has found that, among 85 developing economies with an international seaport, only about one in three has a system of this kind, and these are the very economies into which supply chains are now being extended. On this, I applaud the efforts of the IMO (International Maritime Organization) whose digitalisation strategy takes the right approach: not one system for every port, but interoperable systems that can work together. Hong Kong's system was built to connect, and we are exploring links with more ports in the Chinese Mainland and overseas.
Information that moves a container can also move credit. Under Project CargoX, led by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, 21 participating banks are now testing how such data, shared on a common digital platform with the owner's consent, can enable faster transaction verification than paper documents for credit assessment by the banks. In less than six months, some 10 trade finance loans have been secured on the strength of PCS's trusted cargo-flow data. The project is now being extended to cover ports in the Yangtze River Delta on the Mainland and Southeast Asia.
Building resilience together
Ladies and gentlemen, these three changes have one thing in common. Each crosses borders, and each is moving faster than the rules and relationships meant to manage it. That is the resilience gap we need to close, and I propose three ways to bridge it together.
First, we should keep our rules aligned. WTO economists estimate that a world divided into rival blocs would lose about 5per cent of its output, and that smaller and poorer economies would lose over three times as much as wealthy ones. In shipping the case is even more immediate, because a ship trades between jurisdictions for 25 years or more. We hope economies will resist protectionist measures, and will set their standards and settle their differences within global frameworks, above all at the International Maritime Organization, whose members will meet again in London in two weeks. An owner deciding which ship to order needs one answer, not several.
Second, we should turn goodwill between ports into partnerships. An IMO-backed study found that a container ship which knows in good time when its berth will be ready can save about 14per cent of its fuel on a voyage, and that begins with ports and ships exchanging a few timestamps in a common format. Partner ports can go further. They can recognise each other's standards for new fuels, so that a ship getting supplied at one end of a route can be supplied to the same standard at the other. They can alert each other early when a route is disrupted, and exchange people as well as data. Hong Kong has formed "partner port" relationships with San Antonio Port in Chile, and Dalian and Guangxi on the Mainland. We have also entered into "brother port" relationship with Shanghai last month, and will announce more partner ports this week.
Third, we should invest in people. New fuels and systems are only as safe as the crews who handle them. The BIMCO (Baltic and International Maritime Council) and the ICS estimate that the world fleet is already short of some 39 000 officers and will need about 114 000 more by 2030. Technology can be bought, but competence has to be trained, and recognised from one flag and one port to the next. Later today, the Hong Kong Maritime and Port Development Board and the ICS Academy will sign a Memorandum of Understanding to train multi-skilled maritime workforce for Hong Kong and beyond with the global standards.
Closing
Ladies and gentlemen, the ships being ordered this year will still be trading in 2050. They will outlast our terms of office and, I suspect, most of our forecasts. Whether they will sail in an open and orderly system depends less on any single economy than on the co-operation we form now, in rooms like this one. Hong Kong is determined to be a reliable partner in that endeavour.
This is a closed-door session, I hope you will speak frankly, so that we can learn from one another and strengthen the industry as a whole.
Thank you.
The Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, speaks at the Hong Kong Global Maritime Trade Summit - Closed-Door Dialogue today (November 15). Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
