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Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Henry Tang, at a media session after the Forum on the Implementation of "The Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta Region" by Hong Kong and the nine municipalities in the Pearl River Delta Region today (July 21):
Reporter: ... doors have yet to be opened under CEPA. What are they? Who is being left behind and how are you going to lobby the Guangdong government in opening those doors? Thank you.
Chief Secretary for Administration: As far as CEPA is concerned, after the first agreement in 2003 there have been six supplementary agreements. The sixth supplementary agreement will come into effect on October 1 of this year. What we are trying to achieve is that now that the main avenues are opened, but there are a number of small doors that still need to be opened, or need to be completed. So we are in the process, we have done the process of identifying some of those doors. Many of those actually are not doors or barriers per se, but it's just the time it takes to process an application or time it takes to process a particular company. So what we have done is that we have persuaded, and we have done our persuasion, and the Guangdong government is very receptive that some of these procedures can be simplified or can be speeded up. I don't want to go into specific examples because it may involve companies that you know, but otherwise it is basically a lot of procedural, technical details, and we are in the process of sorting all of them out.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Issued at HKT 20:00
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