Hong Kong, China sign new CEPA supplement

Enhances economic and trade cooperation and exchange.

Supplement X to the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) was signed recently by Hong Kong Financial Secretary, John C Tsang, and the Chinese Vice-Minister of Commerce, Gao Yan.

It provides for 73 services liberalization and trade and investment facilitation measures; strengthens cooperation in finance, trade and investment facilitation and further promotes the mutual recognition of professional qualifications in Hong Kong and China.

It brings to 403 the total number of liberalization measures for trade in services under CEPA, since its signing in 2003. Tsang said that Supplement X contains the greatest number of measures among the supplements made since that original signing.

Under CEPA and previous Supplements, 28 sectors have already been partly liberalized for Hong Kong, including legal services, computer and related services, real estate, telecommunications, banking, securities, tourism, and maritime, air and road transport. Supplement X will further relax the market access conditions for all these sectors effective January 1, 2014.

With regard to legal services, Guangdong law firms will be allowed to enter into agreements with representative offices set up by Hong Kong law firms in Guangdong.

In banking, a Hong Kong bank's operating institution in the Mainland, after obtaining approval to conduct renminbi business for Hong Kong enterprises, may provide services to enterprises in the Mainland that are recognized as owned by Hong Kong investors, despite investors of those enterprises being based in a place other than Hong Kong.