The SAR recently expanded its talent list, offering residency status to highly skilled workers of 60 job types in total. Among the latest additions were financial professionals with Islamic market experience as well as accountants.
On Monday, labour and welfare secretary Chris Sun told a Legislative Council panel meeting that the city brought in some 1,700 professionals since the list was first introduced.
Around 1,400 of them came to the SAR since officials made changes to the list two years ago.
On whether the government would remove certain professions from the list if there are enough local workers, Sun said: “It is not necessarily the case that we only add more professions or occupations to the list. We also have to consider the market situation.
“If there is sufficient local talent in the future, we don’t rule out deleting some of the professions or occupations here [on the list].”
Sun also said he doesn’t think imported labour would drive down wages among local workers.
“We are not talking about a large number of talent in each profession… The salary is still determined by the market,” he said.
