The Governments of Tianjin and Macau yesterday inked four Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and agreements concerning cultural and tourism cooperation on the sidelines of the Macau Week activities currently held in the Chinese city.
The College of Tourism and Service Management of Nankai University in Tianjin and the Macau Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) also signed a pact in relation to educational training, and the Tianjin Commission of Commerce and the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) have agreed to step up exchange and cooperation in one of the MoUs.
Vice mayor of Tianjin, Ren Xuefeng said more than 150 Macau enterprises have invested in Tianjin so far and hoped the SAR can continue to perform its special role in connecting the Mainland and the Portuguese-speaking countries so that more companies from Tianjin will be encouraged to develop business abroad, TDM news reported.
Meanwhile, deputy director of the Commission of Commerce Li Shengli said the current trade cooperation scale between Macau and Tianjin is “relatively small” valuing less than 10 million yuan and the foreign investment amounting to about 200 million yuan.
Li pointed out that Tianjin is the “financial hub of Northern China” while Macau is “one of the important gateways to Southern China”, and therefore the two places should reinforce cooperation to meet the development trends and actively fulfill the Mainland and Macau Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in order to achieve a win-win situation, according to TDM news.
He also vowed that Tianjin would provide services to enterprises coming from Macau and hoped that the SAR Government can offer support to Tianjin’s businesspeople wishing to invest in the territory.
Meanwhile, Secretary for Economy and Finance Francis Tam Pak Yuen pledged that Macau will help Tianjin to develop, adding that this mainland city has “favourable conditions in many aspects” and thus will continue to be an “important cooperation partner for Macau”.
Furthermore, Tianjin mayor Huang Xingguo said in the meeting with the secretary that he believed only by relaunching the air link between the two places could the tourism industry grow further.
The Tianjin-Macau route was dropped after less than two years of operations due to lack of passengers.
Tam said he would convey the mayor’s message about resuming direct flight services to Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai On.
On the other hand, in response to local small and medium enterprises’ calls for more support from the Government to access cross-border business opportunities, the secretary said at the Macau airport on Saturday that certain favourable initiatives can be offered but “at the end of the day the Government cannot substitute the enterprises to plan for their future development”.
Tam added that the Government should not teach the companies how to run a business and that the companies have to “feel the changes in the market every day in order to adapt to them accordingly to be able to survive”.
