Ribbon cutting on the opening ceremony

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Guangdong Province are seeking to forge closer ties by jointly launching more investment projects.

Tang Bingquan, vice governor of Guangdong Province, said Wednesday (May 19) at the Guangdong-Hong Kong Economic and Technological Cooperation Fair that his province invites Hong Kong and foreign investment for a total of 150 large-sized projects which cover high-tech, infrastructure, agriculture, logistics and some other fields.

He believed that the fair is a concrete progress for implementing the Chinese mainland/Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA).

He said by promoting cooperation scale and level between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, the Greater Pearl River Delta Region including Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao and eight other provinces and autonomous regions are expected to become one of theworld's most prosperous and vigorous economic center with 10 to 20years of efforts.

Tang said Guangdong's investment environment has been improved greatly with years of efforts. The provincial government's work for this year is to simplify procedures for establishment of projects, speed up the building of communications networks and modernization of ports. Guangdong is to complete the building up of an express way network that covers the whole province by 2005.

He said his province especially welcomes investment for both eastern, western parts of Guangdong Province and its mountainous areas. The province also encourages overseas investment for labor-intensive and resource development-oriented ventures in those regions.

Tang said Guangdong and Hong Kong outlined a new cooperation framework last August and established 15 Guangdong-Hong Kong cooperation task forces. The two sides have decided to jointly launch 13 large-sized projects since then and nine projects have been completed.

He said by the end of 2003, 76,944 Hong Kong-invested ventures had been established in Guangdong, introducing a total of 146.5 billion HK dollars (18.78 billion US dollars) of contracted investment.

In a related development, Shenzhen City announced here Wednesday that it is to host the First International Cultural Industry Fair between Nov. 18 and Nov. 22 and also welcomes Hong Kong-based ventures to participate in the fair.

Editor: Donald