Guangdong and Hong Kong yesterday signed a series of agreements to strengthen economic and social ties between the two sides.

The agreements, which came after the Supplement V to the Hong Kong-Mainland Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) reached last Tuesday in Hong Kong, ranged from education, tourism, medical service, labor security, urban construction to science and technology.

"We are very delighted to see that a series of cooperation in the service sector with the mainland written into the Supplement V to the CEPA will be first implemented in Guangdong next year," said Chief Executive Donald Tsang at a press briefing after the 11th Hong Kong-Guangdong Joint Cooperation Conference in Guangzhou yesterday.

The chief executive said that Guangdong has proposed to hold a series of promotional events in Hong Kong to woo the city enterprises to invest in the service sector on the mainland.

"We will support the proposal, in a bid to better implement the agreements we reached in the service industry," said Tsang.

Moreover, a cooperative agreement to push up Hong Kong-invested processing trade enterprises to upgrade their businesses was also signed yesterday between the two sides.

"A rising number of Hong Kong-invested enterprises are having tough times in continuing businesses in the Pearl River Delta area because of the implementation of the new Labor Contract Law, rising labor and production costs," Tsang said.

The agreement to push Hong Kong-funded enterprises to upgrade their production plants will play a key role in helping them maintain their businesses in the Pearl River Delta area, Tsang said.

Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua said that the province will issue a series of preferential policies and measures to help Hong Kong-invested enterprises in industrial upgrading.

One of the key measures, he said, is to implement a new labor and industry strategy, known as "double transfer", in the next five years, which means transferring labor-intensive industries from the Pearl River Delta region to less-developed northern, eastern and western areas.

According to Huang, Guangdong will invest more than 40 billion yuan till 2012 to support infrastructure construction, industrial transferring and labor training in these areas.

"The strategy will greatly help Hong Kong-invested processing trade companies better upgrade their businesses by reducing labor and production costs in the province's less-developed areas," Huang said.

Editor: Yan