Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying Friday witnessed the signing of the agreement on trade in services between Hong Kong and China's mainland.
Signed between the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and the Ministry of Commerce under the framework of the mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), the new accord makes reference to the agreement between the mainland and Hong Kong on achieving basic liberalization 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 liberalization in both breadth and depth, including extending the implementation of the majority of Guangdong pilot liberalization measures to the whole mainland, reducing the restrictive measures in the negative list and adding 28 liberalization 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 percent of all the World Trade Organization 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 favorable position to enjoy the mainland's most preferential liberalization measures is assured by the agreement's Most-Favored 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.
