The Mainland/Macao Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) provided great space and opportunity for Macao's economic development and its economic integration with mainland and also set foundation for Macao's economic diversification, said Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah here on Thursday.

While addressing the opening of the Forum on Economic and Trade Cooperation and Development between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, Ho said that CEPA is creating a big, barrier-free integrating market.

He said that under the framework of CEPA, a free merchandise trade has basically been realized between Macao and the Chinese mainland, thus enabling commodities originated in Macao to enter mainland market with zero-tarriff.

Besides, under CEPA, more Macao services providers began their businesses in mainland market. More and more self-employed individuals did businesses in mainland, taking advantages of CEPA policies. Lawyers and doctors from Macao obtained relevant certificates by attending State-level qualification exams. The launch of Individual Visit Scheme also promoted the tourism development in Macao.

Since the signing of CEPA in October 2003, Macao's annual economic growth rate has surpassed 10 percent in real term.

Edmund Ho said that strengthening economic and trade cooperation with mainland and gradually integrating with the mainland economy have become an important part of Macao's development strategy.

Based on Macao's comparative advantage, the Macao SAR government is sparing no efforts to build the region into a regional trade services platform, especially a services platform for economic cooperation and exchange between the Chinese mainland and Portuguese-spoken countries, said Edmund Ho.

The project of the Zhuhai-Macao trans-regional industrial zone, which is expected to be completed soon, is one of the measures taken to strengthen such cooperation, Ho said.

The economic integration of Macao and mainland is an inevitable phase for regional economic cooperation and during that process, CEPA is playing a key, active role, said Ho.

Editor: Yan