Response to the signing of CEPA II has been quite favourable and some people are considering expanding their production or investing in new machinery, Financial Secretary Henry Tang says.

Speaking to the media today, Mr Tang said in order to maximise the benefits of CEPA, it is up to the Hong Kong people to work harder and increase their competitiveness to realise the potential of CEPA.

"The Government dors have a role to play in the facilities that we provide to allow companies to maximise the benefits and that include software such as the one-stop enquiry lines, as well as simplification of documentation," he said.

"Documents are actually pretty simple already. However, we will continue to look at ways to see whether we can further simplify them, but ensure that the integrity is still there.

"As far as hardware is concerned, again, yesterday the response has been quite favourable and some people are thinking of expanding their production or investing in new machinery."

Funds, industrial estates target SMEs

He suggested they take a closer look at Hong Kong's industrial estates or science park .

"They will find that we are more competitive than they think," he said.

As far as capital is concerned, he said, the four SME funds are actually doing quite well.

"Again, we encourage them to take another look at them. We will continually keep under review all of these facilities to facilitate the CEPA benefits in order for the companies to maximise the benefits."