The Leisure & Cultural Services Department will extend business hours for billiard halls from 2am to 6am.

The move, announced at today's Business Facilitation Advisory Committee meeting, will apply to licence applicants with no record of nuisance to the public and have no Police objection.

The committee also noted the Food & Environmental Hygiene Department has shortened the time for issuing provisional licences to food factories which only reheat pre-cooked food items from 28 to 14 working days.

For registration of proprietary Chinese medicine, the Department of Health has been exploring ways to address the trade's concerns about difficulties encountered in conducting quality tests. The department has recently provided the trade with supplementary information on how to establish quality specification, and will arrange further meetings to facilitate communication with it.