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Hong Kong’s Middle East adventure: will there be gold or just heartache over cultural obstacles and lack of official support?
- Governments across the world are racing to get a slice of the pie as Gulf states plough billions of dollars of oil profits into economic reforms
- After 10 months of engagement by the Hong Kong government, results are slowly trickling in for local companies
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The Hong Kong government is on a drive to tap into the wealthy Middle Eastern market to diversify the city’s economy after three years of pandemic curbs and strained US-China ties. In the first of a two-part series, Natalie Wong looks at challenges local firms face and how they can press ahead. The second part can be found here.
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A plastic “ghost”, a cutlery “maniac” and an old clothes “imp” are among a cast of characters Arthur Lam feels fondly about when he talks about his mobile app to gamify adopting a low-carbon lifestyle.
In February, he paid silent thanks to them when his engineering company, Negawatt Utility, which uses information technology to make energy management smarter, signed a partnership with Abu Dhabi.
Lam was one of the few start-up executives invited by city leader John Lee Ka-chiu to join his maiden Middle East trip that month. The partnership signed in Dubai and witnessed by Lee will motivate residents in Masdar City to shift towards a low-carbon lifestyle through a mobile platform.
“It’s like a stamp of approval that transformed our business,” Lam said.
Negawatt Utility is just one of the success stories of the government’s drive to tap into the wealthy markets of the Middle East and diversify the city’s economy, after three years of pandemic restrictions and uneasy Sino-US ties.
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