Many of the members of this list have sung the praises of the ICT
businesses and what they can do for economic development. I would
like to say that it might not all be as perfect as it might seem. Things
might be going very well in India, but it's not that way everyplace in Asia.
In Hong Kong, many of the dotcoms are going bankrupt, and not paying
their bills to other companies, like small web developers, small PR
companies and others. These dotcoms spent huge amounts publicising
their sites, even with sports events, billboards, stories in the papers, and
ads. Sometimes they paid in stocks. Sometimes they promised to pay
later, when they hit gold. But when they ran out of money, it ended up that
many of them didn't pay at all.
Small companies had started to feel the benefits of the big boom in Web
businesses, and were getting over the problems of the economy crash in
1997. We really believed, like the people in India, that this boom was here
to stay. But what we discovered is that the Internet boom can become a
bust just as fast. It's especially a problem for small companies because
we don't have the money or power to go to court, and we don't want our
other clients to know that some of them aren't paying on time. We also
don't want potential clients to think we didn't do a good job, and that's
why we're not getting paid.
So my advice to everyone is to be careful about thinking that the Internet
and ICTs are the solution to all economic problems. Not everything is as
good as it looks. At least be careful about what companies you do work for.
Because the ICT companies, at least the small dotcoms, might be here
today and gone tomorrow, along with any money they owe you. I don't
know if maybe there could be a backup by government or the World Bank,
so that if the ICT companies go out of business, they don't take others
with them.
Connie Fung
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