Pedestrians cross a road in front of a Citibank branch, which is located in the central business district of Hong Kong. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-poChan Mo-po said on Friday that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government will consider putting more resources into the HK $30 billion $3.84 billion Co-Investment Fund proposed in this year s Policy Address.
He said that the scale-up will depend on whether more projects and businesses get investments from the program.
Chan said at the Hong Kong Association of Banks event that the government should adopt a more proactive approach to encouraging local economic growth rather than fixating on laissez-faire market doctrcine.
The Co-Investment Fund is one of a series of plans announced by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in his maiden policy address last month as part of the government's proactive and aggressive approach to compete for enterprises, investment and talents.
The Co-Investment Fund has HK $30 billion set aside from the Future Fund to encourage businesses to set up operations in Hong Kong and invest in their businesses.
Chan said the city will try to develop the virtual-asset industry in a progressive and sustainable way, and attract the global virtual-asset community to the city despite the recent turmoil in the market for cryptocurrencies.
After the collapse of FTX, which filed for bankruptcy protection this month, he made a commitment to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours. After looking at FTX's finances, the rival exchange Binance abandoned a proposed rescue deal.
Chan stated that the SAR government is clear about the risks posed by virtual assets and that they will adopt the principle of same business, same risk and same rules to safeguard investors interests.
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He said that the licensing regime for virtual-asset service providers will be rolled out in the coming months to meet compliance requirements such as anti-money laundering, with an emphasis on ensuring risk is controllable and that market volatility will not spill over into the real economy.