Twelve extremely busy months have passed since our last Annual General Meeting on April 24, 2001. Under the leadership of Chairman Christopher Cheng, the Chamber has made the most of every day in all three of its mission areas -- policy, programmes, and business facilitation. Overall, we had more than 300 programmes in the last 12 months! Needless to say, each of our 4,000 or so corporate members should have been able to find some Chamber event which helped their business.

On policy, the most significant work has been on the "Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement" between the Hong Kong SAR and the Central governments. Starting from proposing the idea once again formally to Chief Executive C H Tung in the autumn of 2001, to pointing out that the definition of "Hong Kong company" should be broad enough to be in keeping with Hong Kong's international character, to proposing a two-phased strategy for negotiation, to providing detailed input on the business community's wishes, the Chamber has been nurturing this process every step of the way.

We started work recently on our next major policy project: trying to find ways that the civil service can be re-structured so that it can be leaner and more efficient. This is because our members have told us, in no uncertain terms, that the government's priority in fixing the deficit problem should focus on reducing public expenditure. Only after that, if the deficit persists, should any new taxes be contemplated.

Regarding programmes, over the past 12 months we saw some very prominent business and government leaders from around the globe speak to packed houses as part of our Distinguished Speakers' Series. These included SAR Chief Executive C H Tung, Mayor of Shanghai Xu Kuangdi, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, HSBC Holdings Chairman John Bond, Standard Chartered Chairman Sir Patrick Gillam, China's chief trade negotiator Long Yongtu, People's Bank of China Governor Dai Xianglong, and Forbes publisher Steve Forbes. These are in addition to Chief Secretary Donald Tsang and Financial Secretary Antony Leung. Our sandwich roundtables, too, remained extremely popular, especially among our 3,000 or so SME members, and our WTO workshops were of great interest to all members and the media.

On business facilitation, we organised a number of business-matching meetings for members with businessmen from around the world, and led several fruitful trade missions to China, North Korea, and Myanmar. Moreover, our Web site now receives over 300,000 page views a month from visitors around the world. Our business hotline gets more than 200 calls per month. Our trade inquiries number more than 250 per month. Our WTO Corner and our WTO work are well recognised here and abroad. And finally, networking among our members, whether from overseas, or Hong Kong, or from Mainland China, is an everyday occurrence at Chamber events.

Times have been tough for Hong Kong these past 12 months, and we are doing the same as all of you -- cutting costs and increasing value.