The Chief Executive, Mr Chui Sai On, said in Guangzhou today that all Pan-Pearl River Delta (PPRD) provinces and regions had been focusing more on leveraging on their unique advantages in the past nine years, bringing co-ordinated development in the improvement of people’s livelihood.

This deepened area of co-operation had continued to intensify and achieved encouraging results, Mr Chui told the High-level Forum of the 10th Pan-Pearl River Delta Regional Co-operation and Development Forum this afternoon.

Mr Chui told the Forum, attended by leaders from the central government ministries and commissions, and the “9+2” provinces and regions, that Macao was making its bests efforts on adequate economic diversification and expediting the development of Macao as a world tourism and leisure centre and a business and trade services platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries.

Mr Chui said the Government would continue to strengthen Macao’s integrated competitiveness in tourism by optimising multi-destination tours to share international tourist sources, enhance promotion of innovative regional tourism in the international market, join hands to improve tourism service quality, and deepen mutual complement in tourism between sister provinces and regions.

He said one of the most important missions of Macao was to establish a business and trade services platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries. To achieve this, the Government is now implementing the following plans:

1. Prepare to establish an interactive and information sharing platform to facilitate co-operation and exchanges between enterprises and bilingual speakers in China and the Portuguese-speaking countries;

2. Organise more delegations of PPRD and Macao entrepreneurs to visit and invest in the Portuguese-speaking countries;

3. Support and facilitate tourism co-operation between the mainland and the Portuguese-speaking countries, and promote development of tourism businesses with each other;

4. Make improvements in organising exhibitions at international and national levels, and render support to enterprises from the PPRD provinces and regions and the Portuguese-speaking countries, enabling them to exchange views and explore international markets through the exhibition platform provided by Macao;

5. Consider ways to assist mainland enterprises, under the national policies and the principles of market operation, to establish overseas economic and trade co-operation zones in Portuguese-speaking countries.

According to Mr Chui, following the success of the workshop held earlier in the year, the Government is considering to organise regular activities catered for PPRD participants to gain a better understanding of development opportunities provided through Macao. As a platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries, Macao will provide targeted services to encourage deepened co-operation between PPRD provinces and regions and the Portuguese-speaking countries. Macao will spare no effort to provide quality services and play its role as a platform.

The Chief Executive of the Macao SAR, Mr Chui Sai On, and leaders from the other “9+2” provinces and regions attended the opening ceremony of the 10th Pan-Pearl River Delta Regional Co-operation and Development Forum and Trade Fair this morning, and witnessed the contract signing ceremony for numerous economic and trade co-operation projects. After the ceremony, accompanied by other honoured guests, they visited an exhibition on the achievements on the 10th anniversary of the Forum.

Mr Chui is scheduled to attend the Joint Conference of Chief Executives tomorrow morning (13 October) and return to Macao in the afternoon.