Hong Kong joined hands with the adjacent Guangdong Province in China's mainland to organize a day-long online investment seminar in Hong Kong Tuesday, the first of its kind which lured active participation.

The Greater Pearl River Delta (HK-Guangdong) Online Investment Seminar 2004, which highlights the advantages of using Hong Kong as a service platform and Guangdong as a manufacturing base, attracted companies or individuals interested in investing in Hong Kong and Guangdong in 20 countries and regions. The seminar website has recorded 190,000 visits, and 660 questions were put up there during the day, with 390 of which being answered online.

The seminar featured speeches by senior government officials, such as Hong Kong Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang, Director-General of Invest HK Mike Rowse and Guangdong Department of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Director-General Liang Yaowen. Prominent businessmen also shared their experience on investing in Hong Kong and Guangdong.

Tsang told the seminar that in the past two decades, Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta in the mainland, known together as the Greater Pearl River Delta (GPRD) -- have combined and leveraged the strengths to develop into the world's most efficient and cost-effective manufacturing supply chains. Each day, over 300 million US dollars worth of goods are produced by thousands of factories in the region.

According to him, the cooperation between Guangdong Province and Hong Kong will expand even faster with the implementation of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) and the easing of restrictions on mainland travelers to Hong Kong.

Mike Rowse said at the seminar that in the government's latest annual survey, a total of 3,207 overseas companies had regional operations in Hong Kong, which was corroborated by the United Nations report which named Hong Kong again as the best-performing host economy for foreign direct investment in Asia. Moreover, in 2004, the Heritage Foundation voted Hong Kong as the world's freest economy for the tenth consecutive year.

He added that Hong Kong's position as a gateway to and from the mainland, has been strengthened with the introduction of CEPA, noting that there are business advantages and cost savings to be gained from CEPA.

(Xinhua News Agency June 30, 2004)