Nurturing Talents and Professionals

Mr. John Tsang Chun-Wah said aid would be given to foster talent, in which expenditure for education would be $75 billion, accounting for 21.5 per cent of recurrent government expenditure, which is an increase of 70 percent over ten years.

More subsidy would be provided to future leaders in Finance Internship Programme, to increase this internship vacant spots to 40 this year.

The Scheme for Cross-boundary Study Tour for Post-secondary Financial Talents, which allows Hong Kong students to understand the dynamics of the mainland financial market, would receive subsidies for 30 students to join the scheme.

The ASEAN Internship scheme launched in 2014 would be extended to cover the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong Shue Yan University and Hang Seng Management College, increasing the number of participating institutions to 11.

In order to enrich IT programme in secondary schools, a steering committee including IBM, Google, Microsoft and Huawei would be set up to coordinate and promote such IT development. More internships and activities would be organised to nurture IT professionals.

He said that there would be an increase in monthly allowances of Internship Programme under ITF, and would be extended to cover incubatees and SME tenants of the Cyberport and Science Park.

Start-ups would be funded by the Innovation and Technology Venture fund, to encourage fresh blood into the field.

To encourage continuing education, Mr. Tsang said starting from the next academic year, a pilot scheme to provide tuition fee subsidy would be implemented, to subsidize three cohorts of students admitted to designated professional part-time programmes offered by the Vocational Training Council, covering construction, engineering and technology programmes. The expenditure would amount to $200 million which would benefit 5600 people.

He also said that $420 million had been given to the Construction Industry Council in enhancing training and promotion efforts. As of 2015, 18,000 semi-skilled workers have completed their training.

He also mentioned about the Earn and Learn Pilot Scheme for the Retail Industry ,which was implemented in 2014 to subsidize on-the-job training, he said 1500 practitioners will be trained, and are recognised under the Qualifications Framework.

To address the shortage of manpower in the insurance and asset wealth management sector, Financial subsidies will be provided to practitioners or training, and new internship places would be offered to university students to attract new blood.