Our Fellowship Chairman today was PP Gary and our Sergeant-at-Arms was Rtn Christophe. Our Sergeant-at-Arms managed to collect $970 between the raffle and fines.

Today President Tobias announced that the District Installation will be held on 22 July (Sat) at Hongkong International Trade and Exhibition Centre at Kowloon Bay, our club will reserve one table for members and it will replace our dinner meeting on 20th July. And we will have EGM at the lunch meeting on 29th June 06.

The speaker of today was Mr. Bill Galvin. His topic was "The Logistic Business in Hong Kong and China". In his presentation, Bill covered the Trends in the Hong Kong and Pearl River Delta logistics sector, “That Bridge” – personal reality check, Logistics and China’s international trade, and at the end, Hong Kong’s likely role. Bill said the decline in Hong Kong’s share of direct export / import volume was very predictable more than 5 years ago and Hong Kong’s main terminal operators are well hedged in Yantian, Shekou and Nansha. If Hong Kong’s cross-border port traffic is likely to decline, why build “the bridge”?

The Western PRD is stronger in lower-end products while Shenzhen and Dongguan have moved into high value products (less garments and toys, more technology / comms. products). Thus, only 2,000 or so containers are moved across the delta daily into Hong Kong / Shekou – not even a mid-sized ship’s worth. Shipping by boats is cheaper than by road and does not add to road congestion. His view is that the scale of investment may not be warranted. In time, the Western PRD will generate its own scale for its own container port (currently a couple of minor ports, with Nansha only doing a few thousand TEU per month, a fraction of its capacity). So it is much cheaper to build an expressway up the coast to Nansha than a bridge to Hong Kong.

As a result, the role of Hong Kong in future is to help professionalize China’s trades in all respects. The natural result will be a complete commercial integration with China. Government policy should be “non-intervention”.