Taking its cue from Beijing's "One Belt One Road" strategy, Hong Kong is endeavoring to strengthen cooperation with the mainland both by pushing local enterprises to tap into the mainland market and helping the mainland reinforce economic and trade ties with foreign markets, the SAR government's latest Budget shows.

Once an agreement to push trade liberalization between Hong Kong and Guangdong province signed at the end of last year comes into effect, the province will open up 153 service trade sub-sectors to Hong Kong suppliers, accounting for 95.6 percent of all trade sub-sectors.

Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah is confident of the mainland's liberalization measures deepening further and expects them to be effective nationwide.

"I hope we could achieve basic liberalization of trade in services between Hong Kong and the entire mainland by the end of this year," Tsang said.

Since the introduction of the mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003, the SAR has issued 3,000 certificates of Hong Kong Service Supplier, enabling thousands of Hong Kong residents to set up individually owned companies on the mainland.

"As the mainland and Hong Kong are expanding market liberalization and further facilitate trade and investment, CEPA will continue to present tremendous development opportunities to Hong Kong service suppliers in accordance with the preferential treatment under it," Tsang said.

Besides continually tapping into the mainland market, "Hong Kong will also seek opportunities in helping mainland enterprises walking out in augmenting the city's competitiveness," Tsang said.

Since Hong Kong has more experience in tackling the foreign markets, "the city can provide mainland enterprises that seek to 'go global' with a wide range of legal and financial professional services, including international investment, cross-border trade settlement, Renminbi bond issuance and asset and risk management services," he added.

"Enterprises from both Hong Kong and the mainland can take full advantage of their strengths in matching as partners," one government source said. "For example, Hong Kong has an advantage in shopping tour while the mainland is more advantaged in leisure tour, our tourism sectors could cooperate to expand the overseas market."

As part of Beijing's "One Belt One Road" strategy to promote co-development among countries in Asia, Europe and Africa, Hong Kong can take advantage of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) set up by the central government.

Last October 26 countries signed a memorandum of understanding in Beijing and formally announced a plan to establish the AIIB.

"We shall endeavor to leverage our strength in financing and asset management to support its establishment and operation, and pursue actively the possibility of our joining AIIB," Tsang said.

The government source pointed out that AIIB is also accessible to non-sovereign parties, "but in order to join Hong Kong has to drum up support of the central government," the source said.

"Joining AIIB will help Hong Kong strengthen economic and trade ties with other member countries, and as a result grasp opportunities to expand market scope of financial service sector to tackle challenges, such as that from Singapore," she added.

gladdy@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 02/26/2015 page3)