Scottish businesses seeking to trade in Asia should look beyond the giants of India and China and seek out the "masses of opportunities" in rising southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, the UK Government's Trade Minister has said.
Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, the former HSBC bank boss who is now Minister of State for Trade and Investment, said that Asians had an unfulfilled "huge appetite" for UK and Scottish goods and services.
Speaking in advance of a speech to the recently created Asia Scotland Institute next week, he said: "Everywhere I go in Asia there is a very warm welcome for British businesses. They like the technology, the quality and the way they do business, but they will quite often in the next breath say, 'We wish we saw more of you, because we see a lot of Koreans and Germans and Americans and Japanese'."
Stressing a belief that "the Union is precious", Green also underlined the benefits to Scottish business in sectors such as oil and gas and food and drink of the UK's network of representations in an array of Asian countries with burgeoning middle classes. He declined to say whether he thought an independent Scotland could replicate this coverage.
Green, who spent 23 years in East Asia, also dismissed growing fears of a Chinese "hard landing", saying that the current decline in the country's GDP growth to "only" 7.5% was a sign of a "necessary rebalancing" away from export reliance and capital investment in infrastructure, "the opposite of the problem in the UK and the US".
Founded last year, the Asia Scotland Institute aims "to promote awareness, understanding and collaboration between Scotland and Asia to create mutually enriching economic, cultural and educational opportunities".
It features a number of distinguished political and business figures on its board, including former Nato general secretary Lord Robertson, CBI Scotland chairwoman Nosheena Mobarik, pro-independence financier Angus Tulloch, and head of Scottish Financial Enterprise, Owen Kelly.
Green is a former McKinsey management consultant who joined the then Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in 1982, rising to be HSBC's chief executive and chairman. He steps down from his ministerial role after three years in December, to be succeeded by a Scot, Ian Livingston, former chief executive of BT and a Celtic FC board member.
Green will address the Asia Scotland Institute, chaired by management consultant Roddy Gow, on Wednesday as part of its Adam Smith series of seminars.
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