By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-09 09:06:33 | Updated at 2025-01-09 19:45:00
10 hours ago
Hong Kong is increasingly recognised as a “superconnector” to Southeast Asia by businesses within the Greater Bay Area amid efforts to diversify their supply chains, a study has found.
The joint research published on Thursday by the Trade Development Council and United Overseas Bank surveyed 600 businesses based in the bay area – the region comprising Hong Kong, Macau, and nine cities within Guangdong province that Beijing envisions as an economic powerhouse.
It showed that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, was the top destination among firms operating in the bay area looking to diversify their supply chains overseas last year, with 84 per cent of respondents indicating they had plans to either maintain or expand their production and sourcing activities within the bloc.
Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were the top three preferred jurisdictions within Asean for supply chain diversification, the study found.
Surveyed businesses scored the strength of Hong Kong’s connectivity with Asean in 2024 at 8.43 on a 10-point scale, up from 6.99 a year earlier.
“Many [mainland companies] would like to leverage the Hong Kong platform … to invest in Asean,” said Trade Development Council Director of Research Irina Fan Yuen-yee.
“You can see [Hong Kong’s] role is, you know, getting more and more important.”
