Hong Kong

Hong Kong Govt to citizens: Drink More Wine!

Today I had lunch with Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary, John Tsang, who presented the Hong Kong’s government’s plan for turning the territory into a hub for wine.

As improbable as this may sound for a city where - to the best of my knowledge - grapes don’t even grow, here the plan:

- Drop wine taxes to zero (Done in Feb. Wine tax here is now ZERO, zilch, niente!)
- Streamline customs to allow wine clearance in temperature controlled areas, not Hong Kong’s searing tropical docks.
- Encourage creation of wine schools to train sommeliers.
- Build a wine museum (How you build a wine museum without a history in wines is a bit beyond me)
- Convert more heritage sites into wine warehouses. This follows on the model of Jim Thompson’s successful Crown Wine Cellars. Using a disused munitions depot, Thompson built a club and wine cellar.
- A certification system for wine warehouses that is overseen by foreign experts.
- Beef up police to combat counterfeit wines
- From June, it will no longer be necessary to get a special license to import and store wine
- The government signed an MOU with France to develop Hong Kong’s wine industry.

Of the one million cases of wine Hong Kong residents now store overseas, Tsang expects at least 10 percent - 100,000 cases - will come to Hong Kong

Asia now accounts for 7% of world wine demand. Tsang expects Asian demand likely to double to 17 bn by 2012 and 27bn by 2017.

All these numbers sound great, but how much revenue and how many jobs will this create for Hong Kong?

Tsang explicitly denied that dropping the wine tax was a favor to Hong Kong’s rich wine drinkers.

Jobs and revenue are the purpose of this venture, Tsang said, but when I asked for his estimates of jobs and money, he said: “Let the market decide.”

© 2008 Thomas Crampton | Developed by Oursky Limited