Photo taken on Sept. 27, 2019 shows a night view of Hong Kong, south China. (Xinhua/Lu Ye)

Singapore may temporarily benefit from Hong Kong's ongoing social unrest, but in the long run Hong Kong is still very attractive, said experts and industry practitioners.

With the violent protests entering their fourth month, Hong Kong has seen some sectors of its economy weakening. This has given rise to discussion that Singapore is secretly benefiting from Hong Kong's prolonged unrest.

Goldman Sachs analysts Gurpreet Singh Sahi and Yingqiang Guo said in a note that they found modest net outflows from Hong Kong dollar deposits in Hong Kong and modest net inflows of foreign exchange deposits in Singapore. They estimated that $3-4 billion had moved to Hong Kong's longtime rival.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong International Airport - one of the busiest and most important commercial hubs in Asia - handled nearly 6 million passengers in August, slumping 12.4 percent year-on-year. By contrast, Singapore's Changi Airport served 5.9 million passengers in August, an increase of 3.8 percent from the previous year.

Rather than capital outflows, what Singapore really benefits from is the financial talent drain from Hong Kong, Liang Haiming, dean of the Belt and Road Institute at Hainan University, told the Global Times on Thursday. "This will affect Hong Kong's financial sector in the short term, as a talent pool is the most important thing for a city's development," he said.

Joshua Lin, business development executive at Singapore start-up Anzene, told the Global Times that his friend plans to expand his website-building business from Hong Kong to Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries, as revenue has been affected amid the violent protests.

However, Ludovic, a French entrepreneur, who has a business in Singapore and travels between China and Singapore, told the Global Times that he doesn't think companies are moving their headquarters out of Hong Kong because of the unrest.

"[Social unrest] may affect certain transactions but it won't have a long-term economic impact," he said, adding that it will not affect Hong Kong in the long run unless there are "profound permanent changes that affect Hong Kong."

According to data collected by the World Economic Forum before the protests, Singapore became the world's most competitive economy in 2019, and Hong Kong ranked third. But as for market efficiency, Singapore was ranked second, behind Hong Kong, according to the forum's Global Competitiveness Report.

The two international finance centers have different playing grounds, and as a result in the long run Hong Kong still has attractions for enterprises and individuals, according to Ludovic.

"Singapore is good for Southeast Asian markets and also a stable place for legal affairs, accounting, intellectual property as well as research and development, while Hong Kong is more sophisticated for banking still and for companies that want to address the North Asian market," he said.

Many people in Hong Kong have asked about moving themselves and their money to Singapore, but they're just asking, Jones Yan, an agent specializing in asset allocation in Hong Kong, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The reason he gave is that more multinational companies in Hong Kong offer more jobs than in Singapore, and personal taxes are also lower in Hong Kong.

It's unwise to leave Hong Kong now, Liang said. With the central government's support, Hong Kong is backed by a huge market of 1.4 billion people and a deep talent pool.

"Once the chaos stops, Hong Kong will still be an international financial center," he said.

Chen Qingqing contributed to the story