Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po hosts a press conference on the issuance of retail green bond, Hong Kong, Feb 15, 2022. (PHOTO / HKSASR GOVERNMENT)
The consumption voucher program lays a solid foundation for the development of the city’s digital economy, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said in his blog on Sunday.
The second batch of HK$5,000 ($637) consumption vouchers will be disbursed this summer, following the first phase’s distribution back in April, he added.
Since the launch of the voucher program last year, about 6.6 million consumer accounts and around 130,000 merchant accounts have started using stored-value services.
The city's retail sales in April ended a two-month decline, rising 11.7 percent year-on-year. Also, the total monthly sales value climbed to HK$30 billion, with sales of electrical appliances and other durable goods surging by more than 40 percent
The finance chief said data-driven consumption vouchers can offer digitalized operations from the beginning of the transaction, which provides “necessary and favorable conditions” for businesses’ digitalization progress in operations and management.
“As long as we grasp the opportunity brought about by this data-driven application, we can still break new ground and find new growth points even if the business environment faces headwinds,” Chan said.
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The city's retail sales in April ended a two-month decline, rising 11.7 percent year-on-year. Also, the total monthly sales value climbed to HK$30 billion, with sales of electrical appliances and other durable goods surging by more than 40 percent.
Chan said online sales “continued to perform well”, despite a decline of about 3 percent in total retail sales in the first four months of this year as a result of the fifth wave of the COVID-19 outbreak.
In the same period, the city's online sales value topped HK$11 billion, up 36 percent from a year earlier.
“It accounted for nearly 10 percent of the total retail sales, more than roughly 7 percent in the same period last year,” said the financial secretary.
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