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New CEPA deal signed

November 27, 2015

Chief Executive CY Leung today witnessed the signing of the Agreement on Trade in Services by Financial Secretary John Tsang and Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen.

 

Signed by the Special Administrative Region Government and the Ministry of Commerce under the framework of the Mainland & Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, the new accord makes reference to the Agreement between the Mainland & Hong Kong on Achieving Basic Liberalisation of Trade in Services in Guangdong signed last year.

 

It becomes a stand-alone, subsidiary agreement relating to trade in services under the CEPA framework.

 

The agreement further enhances the liberalisation in both breadth and depth, including extending the implementation of the majority of Guangdong pilot liberalisation measures to the whole Mainland; reducing the restrictive measures in the negative list; and adding 28 liberalisation measures in the positive lists for cross-border services as well as cultural and telecommunications services.

 

Under the new agreement, there are 153 sectors which the Mainland has fully or partially opened up to the Hong Kong services industry, accounting for 95.6% of all the World Trade Organisation services trade sectors. In respect of the mode of "commercial presence", national treatment will be applied to Hong Kong in 62 sectors.

 

Hong Kong's favourable position to enjoy the Mainland's most preferential liberalisation measures is assured by the agreement's Most-Favoured Treatment provision, which specifies that any preferential treatment the Mainland accorded to other countries or regions, if more preferential than those under CEPA, will be extended to Hong Kong.

 

The agreement will come into effect immediately and be implemented on June 1, 2016.



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