The Mainland And Macao Signed Seventh CEPA Supplementary Agreements, Which Will Take Effect In 2011.

The seventh supplementary agreement of the mainland and Macao on Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) was formally signed at the Macao government headquarters in 28. The agreement will come into effect next year.

Under the testimony of the chief executive of the Macao Special Administrative Region, Cui Shian, director of the Liaison Office of the central Australian liaison office and the deputy director Zhou Bo of the State Council's office of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs, Jiang Zengwei, Vice Minister of State Commerce and Mr. Tan Bo Yuan, Minister of economic and financial affairs of the special economic zone, signed the text of the supplementary agreement seven of CEPA.

The agreement includes two aspects: Trade and investment facilitation and service trade. In terms of service trade, on the basis of the original opening, we further relaxed the market access conditions in 11 service areas, including construction, medical treatment, audio-visual, distribution, banking, social services, tourism, entertainment, air transportation, professional and technical qualification examination and individual businesses. At the same time, we also added 2 fields: technical inspection analysis, cargo inspection and professional design service. The number of open areas in the mainland to Macao has increased to 43.

In terms of trade and investment facilitation, the mainland and Macao will increase educational cooperation to increase the cooperation area of trade and investment facilitation to 10. In the field of industrial cooperation, in addition to the cooperation between the traditional Chinese medicine industry and the exhibition industry, the cooperation in culture, environmental protection and innovation and technology industry will be increased, and the cooperation mechanism and content of cooperation should be clearly defined. New cooperative measures have been added in the field of exhibition industry cooperation to promote the development of Macao's MICE industry.

According to the new agreement, Macao medical institutions can establish hospitals in the form of sole proprietorship in 5 provinces and cities in Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan, and set up sole proprietorship, joint ventures and cooperative sanatorium in Guangdong province. Pharmacists, nurses and other 7 types of staff in Macao can also practise in the mainland for a short time.

CEPA has been signed since 2003 and has been fully implemented since 2004. It has been 6 years since then. At present, the mainland has 43 open services trade areas to Macao, and 261 open measures.

Jiang Zengwei said that CEPA provided a broad space for the common development of Macao and the mainland, and also benefited the residents of Macao and the mainland. The mainland can also take advantage of the special relationship between Macao and Portuguese speaking countries and carry out wider cooperation with Portuguese speaking countries.

Tan Boyuan said that at present, Zhuhai, Foshan, Chongqing and Shanghai are the model cities for CEPA implementation. The Ministry of Commerce will explore more suitable cities as a model city for cooperation with Macao, which is more conducive to promoting and publicizing CEPA, and is also conducive to Macao enterprises to concentrate their efforts on demonstration cities.