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Following is the transcript (English portion) of a stand-up session given by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Donald Tsang, after attending the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce Luncheon at Conrad Hotel today (July 27):

Reporter : About Lo Wu border crossing......

CS : We had a very good discussion about our border crossings with our Guangdong friends two days ago. Lo Wu does feature very prominently, and you know we have decided to extend the opening hours during public holidays and a day before public holidays by half an hour to midnight. We are doing other improvement measures as well like widening the bridge, providing air-conditioning and so on. And we are going to reinforce our customs officials and immigration officials to increase the throughput at Lo Wu. I think in a short term, we are able to manage, but in medium and longer terms, we must think of widening the access points, provide new access points like through the Western Route, the bridges that we have planned and others like the spurline that we are building. All these are coming to place.

(Please refer to the Chinese part of the transcript)

End/Friday, July 27, 2001

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