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Trade and Industry Department The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
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Press Releases

CEPA on the right track on first Anniversary
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

The implementation of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) has been exceedingly smooth since its signing a year ago on 29 June 2003.

"We are fully committed to helping Hong Kong businessmen capture market and investment opportunities under CEPA. We will continue to work closely with our Mainland counterparts to be as business friendly as possible," a spokesman for Trade and Industry Department (TID) said.

TID has received 398 applications for a Hong Kong Service Suppliers (HKSS) Certificate since October last year and 345 applications have been approved. Of the 1,207 applications submitted for CEPA Certificates of Origin, or CO(CEPA), since December last year, 1,118 have been issued, involving a total value of about HK$450 million.

"We originally expected some initial glitches at the outset. We did not have any prior experience and the timetable for us to get ready was too short and ambitious when compared with other free trade agreements. But problems did not occur," added the spokesman.  "We manage to deal with the challenges successfully."

TID is able to fully meet its performance pledges to complete the processing of an application for HKSS within 14 working days and to approve an application for a CO(CEPA) within 1.5 working days.

"With the agreement of the Mainland, we are now able to provide greater flexibility to process applications from group of companies to apply for HKSS from May this year. Eligible companies engaged in substantive business operations in the form of group of companies may now enjoy the benefits of CEPA," said the spokesman. "On the trade in goods side, we processed over 200 applications for the next phase of tariff elimination in 2005 which covered over 700 Mainland tariff codes."

TID is also the hub for disseminating CEPA information. Over 210 commercial information circulars containing Mainland business and trade information were issued in the past 18 months. A dedicated CEPA website (www.tid.gov.hk/english/cepa/) is established and hyperlinked to about 110 trade and investment websites in the Mainland and other useful portals about doing business in the Mainland. Hotlines and email enquiry points (general enquiries : 2398 5667 cepa@tid.gov.hk; rules of origin, CO(CEPA) and factory registration: 34036432 cepaco@tid.gov.hk; next phase of tariff elimination: 23985676 ma_registry@tid.gov.hk; HKSS Certificates: 34036428 hkss@tid.gov.hk) have been set up and are very popular.

"We are pleased that the website and the enquiry services are well received by Hong Kong traders. The CEPA website has got over 630,000 hits and we have handled over 22,000 enquiries since September last year," the spokesman said.

To ensure that Hong Kong companies are familiar with CEPA, TID has organized or participated in about 130 seminars, briefings and workshops in the past months to introduce the content and implementation details of CEPA to major local chambers of commerce, and industry and trade organizations. Mainland officials were also invited to speak in the seminars to explain requirements in the Mainland.

Ends