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The Hong Kong Export Credit Insurance Corporation (HKECIC) has launched an online credit insurance platform called EC-Reach, targeted at small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The new platform will quicken and simplify credit risk management for SMEs and allow faster purchase of export credit insurance from the state-owned insurer.
According to HKECIC commissioner Ralph Lai, Hong Kong has yet to be majorly affected by the US-China trade war, the Hong Kong Standard reported. Lai added that US tariffs mainly targeted semi-finished and non-consumer goods while most of the goods produced in Hong Kong are exported to the mainland. This is why the trade war does not affect Hong Kong in the near term.
Hong Kong legislator Jeffery Lam Kin-fung earlier said that the international trade dispute would prove challenging to Hong Kong’s manufacturing and exporting trade industries. He suggested that the government, which has a healthy fiscal surplus, should extend assistance to affected industries.
One such way, according to Lam, was for HKECIC to expand its insurance coverage.
Last week, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council released its export index for the third quarter of 2018, which indicated that exporters had mixed feelings about the trade war. While expansion prospects in the mainland remained high, exporters are beginning to sour on the United States, with confidence in the US reaching a nine-year low of 39.8.
