Employees of Guangdong companies can apply for quarantine-free business permits to visit Hong Kong starting today.
The online booking system has a daily quota of 1,000 for entry via the Shenzhen Bay Port or the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hong Kong Port.
This is on top of the existing scheme that allows non-Hong Kong residents from Guangdong province to enter the city without quarantine, which has been in effect since Sept. 15.
Macau was removed from exemption on Sept. 25 because of its latest Covid-19 outbreak.
Business owners welcome the new travel scheme.
“Because of Covid and the quarantine policies, we were unable to meet friends and families, and I could not meet my business partners in Hong Kong,” said Feng Minliang, who owns a fashion exhibition-organising company in Zhongshan in Guangdong.
“I think the new policy is very useful,” said Feng. “Although it is only a temporary solution, it is definitely a good start to help the economy recover from Covid.”
Meanwhile, foreign businesses have expressed frustration with the city’s “zero-Covid” strategy.
The American Chamber of Commerce said their efforts in lobbying the Hong Kong government to reopen its borders with the rest of the world has been fruitless, as reported by Bloomberg.
“We’re at the point where it just feels like we’re talking to a wall,” Tara Joseph, president of AmCham in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg.
“The longer the closing of borders goes on, the more vulnerable many businesses are,” said Brian King, the Associate Dean and Professor of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. “There will be job losses.”
The number of headquarters and offices of mainland Chinese companies in Hong Kong increased by 22% to 1986 between 2019 and 2020, according to latest statistics from the Census and Statistics Department.
Meanwhile, the number of headquarters and offices of Japanese, American and British companies all decreased within that same period.
《The Young Reporter》
The Young Reporter (TYR) started as a newspaper in 1969. Today, it is published across multiple media platforms and updated constantly to bring the latest news and analyses to its readers.
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