I am honoured to be invited to officiate at the opening of the "Business After SARS" conference. It is indeed a great pleasure to see so many of you gather here today, a phenomenon that we have not seen, and that we have missed so much, for the last three months.

The fact that we are able to gather together here owes a lot to a group of unsung heroes in our community, who have worked selflessly and tirelessly for three months, often risking their own lives to protect others. Let me begin, therefore, by paying tribute to the commitment, professionalism and courage of our doctors, nurses and other medical workers.

Real heroes are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. From the bottom of my heart I say to all our healthcare workers: You are the real heroes of our community; we are indebted to you.

Hong Kong adapts to challenges

Let us take a minute to reflect on what we had been doing and where we were before the SARS epidemic. Over the past several years, because of the Asian financial turmoil, the bursting of the asset bubble in Hong Kong, and the rapid rise of Mainland China's economy, our own economy had to go through painful restructuring and adjustment.

The task often appeared to be daunting. But we knew Hong Kong had many unique competitive advantages. We have the hardware and software required of a world-class city, including our keen business acumen, a well-developed infrastructure, a versatile financial system, robust legal institutions, policies conducive to a free and open society, a clean and efficient civil service, simple and low tax, a large pool of talent and a very cosmopolitan community.

Strengthening the four pillars

As long as we move with the times, play to our strengths, the strategic position and unique role of Hong Kong cannot be replaced. Over the years, our economic policy has been clear and consistent, that is to consolidate and further develop the four pillars of our economy; namely, an international financial centre, a centre for logistics, a premier tourist destination, and trade and trade-related support services centre.

In the third quarter of last year, our GDP grew by 3.4 % in real terms, and in the fourth quarter, by 5.1%. In the first quarter of this year, before the SARS epidemic took its toll, our GDP continued to grow by a robust 4.5%. The strong growth of our economy of the last three quarters shows us clearly that our economic policy has been in the right direction, that our economy is on the road to recovery, and that the painful economic restructuring that we have been going through is slowly but surely beginning to bear fruit.

The SARS outbreak has unfortunately dealt a devastating blow to the recovery. And indeed, it has knocked our economy off course. The full impact of SARS will only be reflected in the second and third quarters and we expect sharp falls in the GDP growth figures in these quarters.

Relief package eases the pain

The damage SARS has done to our economy is across the board, and the hardest hit are the tourism, hotel, restaurant and retail sectors. In April the Government launched a package of measures involving a total of $11.8 billion to provide support for the various affected sectors, and I hope this would help lessen the pain of our community.

With the epidemic coming under control and the lifting of the travel advisory by the WHO, the US CDC and other countries, we are beginning to see the recovery of business in these sectors, and the recovery is expected to gather momentum.

With the work we have done and the foundation we have laid for our economy to recover, I am confident that the SARS impact on our economic recovery, though severe, would be temporary. The economic policy adopted by the Government in the past several years to reposition and restructure Hong Kong's economy is beginning to work.

Hong Kong to benefit from closer Mainland ties

The rapid growth and expansion of the Mainland economy, particularly the Pearl River Delta, continues to benefit Hong Kong's trade and businesses. The Central People's Government has pledged strong support for Hong Kong: the discussion on a Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and the Mainland is in the final stage and the signing of the arrangement will open up many new and exciting opportunities for Hong Kong, both in the service sector and the manufacturing sector.

Similarly, arrangements for individual visitors from Guangdong Province to visit Hong Kong when finalised in July will give an enormous boost to tourism in Hong Kong. At the same time, deflation and price adjustments that we have been going through in recent years, though very painful, have made us a lot more competitive today. The weakening of the US dollars will benefit our exports and re-exports, and help lower the cost of doing business in Hong Kong for foreign companies.

Of course, a lot more additional work needs to be done for us to get going again.

Eradicate SARS to boost visitors' confidence

Although we have successfully brought the SARS epidemic under control, our immediate task is to eradicate any new SARS cases so that we can remove Hong Kong from the SARS infected areas of WHO list and give additional confidence to visitors and travellers to Hong Kong and to our own community here.

Economic relaunch to boost hard-hit sectors

The Economic Relaunch Strategy Group headed by the Financial Secretary will be launching comprehensive programmes shortly to help revitalise the tourism, hotel, airline, restaurant and retail sectors of our economy severely affected by SARS.

Team Clean to boost hygiene measures - for good

The "Team Clean" headed by the Chief Secretary for Administration announced last week, as Phase I of the team's work, a wide range of firm and decisive measures to promote good personal and public hygiene and tackle the environmental hygiene black spots. These measures will produce quick and visible improvements in our living environment.

"Team Clean" will produce a Phase II work plan, by August, comprising longer-term initiatives to sustain the effort and give a new face to our buildings, streets, backlanes, restaurants and public places to ensure health of our people and quality of life we all long for.

Learning from the past

We need to see as soon as possible what lessons we can learn from the past three months in our effort to fight the SARS epidemic so that we are better prepared in case the epidemic should come again in the winter or spring. Furthermore, the SARS crisis has brought into focus the need for us to improve our public health system, the need to set up a CDC-type organisation and the need to ensure the Hospital Authority can cope with another outbreak in the future.

For this purpose, the Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food is leading a SARS Experts Committee, made up of international experts in epidemiology, hospital management and public health, to undertake a thorough review of the SARS epidemic which we endured. This is a highly professional review. It is not an effort to find fault in individuals; but to seek out facts, to learn from the experience we have accumulated and those accumulated elsewhere so that we will be better prepared if there is a next time.

There is an urgency for the Committee to complete this work in September and still leave time for us to implement any short-term measures before the onset of winter and spring. I know the community will look forward, as I am, to receiving the report of the Committee.

Towards a healthier future

The SARS crisis gives us a clear message that many of our environmental hygiene problems are caused by high population density, by neglect in building maintenance and urban decay. For too long, we have not been doing enough. We must redouble our efforts with "outside the box thinking" to improve our town planning to create more open space; to speed up urban renewal; to redevelop and clear up the urban slums and generally to improve the living environment, so that we can truly live up to our name as Asia's world city.

Stepping up co-operation with the Pearl River Delta

The SARS epidemic tells us clearly that our ties with Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta goes well beyond economic. We breathe the same air, drink the same water, and eat the food produced by the same farms. We must step up cooperation with Guangdong on all fronts that affect our mutual well-being, not only in economic cooperation and infrastructure planning and construction, but also in infectious disease monitoring, public health measures, and in areas of environmental protection. Some work in these areas has already begun; however, we need to speed up the work.

Education key to future opportunities

If we want Hong Kong to become Asia's World City, we must continue to invest in education. We must steadfastly implement the education reform programmes for primary and secondary schools. Some of the reform programmes started two years ago are already showing promising results.

As a community, we must commit with a sense of urgency, greater urgency, for the universities to move towards the four-year degree courses. Better education opportunities will allow all Hong Kong people equal opportunity to move ahead in the society and therefore live a better life.

Attracting investment

Public and private investments in all these areas are not only essential to our health and safety, and the well-being of Hong Kong as a whole, but they will also open up new business opportunities, create jobs and employment. Work in these areas will need not only strong support from the community but in some cases substantial financial resources. The challenge for us is how to accomplish all these goals while at the same time continue to exercise the necessary fiscal prudence which is so important to financial stability. The tasks will not be easy but we must work hard to accomplish them.

Together, in the days ahead, we need to continue to focus our efforts on consolidating and strengthening the four main pillars of our economy; namely financial services, trade, logistics and tourism, while at the same time, to develop and push ahead all the priority work described above. I am confident, with the support of the community, we can make Hong Kong a better place to live and at the same time, revive and revitalise our economy.

Recovery  is underway

In the last three months, Hong Kong has taken on the enormous challenge of fighting SARS. With effective measures taken by the Government and thanks to the concerted efforts of the whole community, we have successfully contained the disease. Businesses hardest hit by the epidemic are beginning to pick up.

Once again, Hong Kong has bounced back with its trademark self-reliance, resilience and vigour. If SARS taught us anything, it was that if we stay together, have a clear focus, have confidence in ourselves, and persevere, we can take on any challenges and overcome any adversities, and Hong Kong will emerge stronger, healthier and more successful than ever before. This is the success of Hong Kong, and this is the Hong Kong spirit that we all cherish.

Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa gave this address at the "Business After SARS" Joint Business Community Conference 2003 on June 7.