Macao to select projects for industrial park
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-10-01 11:03

The Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute announced on Thursday that it has received 67 applications for investing in the Macao part of the Macao-Zhuhai Cross-Border Industrial Park.

Macao and Zhuhai launched the first joint investment promotion for China's first cross-border industrial park on June 29.

president of the institute Lee Peng Hong said that potential investors from Macao, Hong Kong, China's mainland and Taiwan are interested in investing brand garment, food, drug and electronic device manufacturing as well as environmentally-friendly industry in the park.

The park, which sits on a reclaimed plot encompassing 290,000 square meters in Zhuhai and 110,000 square meters in Macao, takes advantages of favorable policies in both the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Special Economic Region of Zhuhai City in south China's Guangdong Province. It is considered a good experiment in China's regional economic cooperation under two different economic systems.

The Secretariat of Economics and Finance of the Macao SAR government will see to the setting up of a special appraisal panel to select projects to enter the industrial park in the next two months. Selected investors are expected to kick off earth work of their plants in the park in March next year at the earliest.

Protected by China's "one country, two systems" principle, Macao has retained its free market economic system and independent status in the World Trade Organization after its return to the motherland in 1999. Macao's trade with its neighboring city of Zhuhai is conducted under separate customs jurisdictions.

Construction of the park began in March. The park is expected to help end worries about Macao's wavering advantage on textile exports because of the removal of global export quota on textile products in 2005, and even broaden its market scope by making full use of favorable policies brought by the Mainland/Macao Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in effect in January this year.

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