Visa’s global Commercial Consumption Expenditure (CCE) measurement shows that Hong Kong business and government spending in 2006 accounted for US$219.2 billion, an eight percent increase over the prior year.

Using the CCE index, a standardized metric to track business and government spending globally, Visa calculates global CCE in 2006 to be US$66.7 trillion, which represents an increase of 8 percent over 2005 expenditures of US $61.8 trillion. Asia Pacific spend accounted for US$17.0 trillion in 2006.

The CCE index is designed to enable the payment industry, including Visa, to measure the penetration of commercial expenditures in an objective and consistent manner. The Visa CCE index includes all commercial spending with the exception of payroll and other select expenditures.

The top five Asia Pacific markets in size of total spend were Japan (US$5.3 trillion), China (US$4.2 trillion), India (US$1.9 trillion), South Korea (US$1.9 trillion) and Australia (US$1.1 trillion). Hong Kong ranked ninth out of the 16 Asia Pacific markets included in the analysis. (Visa Asia)

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