As a free port, the HKSAR maintains optimal import and export documentation requirements to facilitate legitimate trade. Most products do not need licences to enter or leave Hong Kong. Licences or notifications are only required if the HKSAR needs to fulfil its international obligations, protect public health, safety, environment, or intellectual property rights, or ensure Hong Kong's unrestricted access to high technologies and hi-tech products. Products that require import or export licences include textiles and clothing, strategic commodities, rice, chilled or frozen meat and poultry, pharmaceutical products and medicines, pesticides, radioactive substances and irradiating apparatus, and optical disc mastering and replication equipment.

The HKSAR maintains a certification of origin system to facilitate its exports to overseas markets. The Trade and Industry Department administers this system and issues certificates of origin. In addition, the Government has designated five organisations to issue certificates of origin — the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, the Indian Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong, the Chinese Manufacturers' Association of Hong Kong and the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce.

Government Electronic Trading Services

To maintain Hong Kong's competitiveness in the global business community, the Government has been promoting the wider adoption of electronic commerce in the trading community since the early 1990s through gradually mandating the submission of certain trade documents in electronic form. The Government engages service providers to provide the necessary front-end services, known as Government Electronic Trading Services.