More funds urged for research, development

More funds urged for research, development

Liz Heron

Hong Kong needs to dramatically increase public spending on research and development to keep up with its competitors in the race to become a knowledge economy, a World Bank expert says.

An efficient national innovation system - based on university research - was one of four strategic components in the development of knowledge economies identified by a World Bank report, tertiary education co-ordinator Jamil Salmi said.

On Hong Kong's total spending on research and development, which amounts to 0.79 per cent of gross domestic product, Dr Salmi said: 'That's very low. With research, you need to have at least 2 per cent. There is a danger Hong Kong will fall behind its Asian 'tiger' competitors, if it does not increase the public funding on higher education. You also have the advantage of being part of China.'

He said Singapore - ranked top in the world by the Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, in a new world ranking of countries that encourage innovation - was a 'good benchmark' for Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the mainland was 'moving very fast', Vietnam was 'coming up' and both Malaysia and Taiwan were doing well. 'The whole region is very dynamic, so I think it's more important for you than even countries in Europe,' Dr Salmi said.

He said it was particularly important for the government to maintain or increase overall funding for higher education in light of the global financial crisis.

'In many countries, social ministries tend to be weaker than infrastructure or economic ministries, so it's easy to slash budgets for education,' he said. 'But having significant public funding is the best way to attract private funding.

'Some donors are saying: 'Since you are in dire times, let's give you more money.' There are some instances involving philanthropists in the US. [The University of California at] Berkeley has received a US$120 million gift.'

But managers of university endowments - and the government's new HK$18 billion research endowment fund - needed to be very careful in how they invested, he said.

'I would not launch myself blindly without learning the lessons,' he said. 'One of the good lessons is that banks created very sophisticated financial arrangements that proved to be disastrous.

'And for universities, I would just say stay the course and make sure that the quality of your programmes is good enough. The trend for expensive programmes and privately funded programmes is likely to decrease.'