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Hong Kong's chronic air pollution is having "bottom-line economic consequences" in the territory, a senior government adviser said yesterday in the first official admission that worsening air quality is affecting companies' investment decisions.

"Up to a year ago [pollution] really hadn't hit our pocketbook," Victor Fung, chairman of the government-backed Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council, said in a briefing on cross-border issues affecting Hong Kong and China. "But now people are not coming to Hong Kong to take that job because their kid has asthma."

Mr Fung is also chairman of both Hong Kong's airport authority and Li & Fung, his family's $7bn-a-year trade sourcing company.

He is one of the most vocal figures on issues concerning the territory's links to its manufacturing heartland in the Pearl River delta, in China's southern Guangdong province.

Mr Fung's comments came on the heels of an American Chamber of Commerce survey that found that about 60 per cent of 140 senior executives polled were "very worried" about the effect pollution was having on their health.

Almost 40 per cent said Hong Kong's worsening air quality made it difficult to recruit overseas staff.

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