Pulse of Economy and Trade

7th Macao International Trade andInvestment Fair to be held in October

The Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute has always been committed to providing a co-operation platform for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) both local and overseas. The Institute has been organising the highly successful Macao International Trade and Investment Fair for the last six years.

The 6th Fair, held last October comprised of participants from 47 countries and regions. Also attending were five dozen delegations from the Chinese mainland, highlighting the fact that Macao is a window for SMEs on the mainland to the outside world.

This time there were more than 700 exhibition booths , three times that of the previous fair. A total of 980 enterprises from 18 countries and 29 provinces from the Chinese mainland attended the fair, more than 100,000 people attended, and four dozen contracts, co-operation agreements and letters of intent were signed. The total value of contracts and agreements signed amounted to nearly US$ 600 million, three times higher than in 2000. Last year’s fair set new records in terms of the number of participants and value of contracts.

A “contact bourse” for enterprises was well received by the participants, resulting in more than 500 enterprises registering, and more than 200 finding their business partners.

Enterprises from the Portuguese-speaking countries were represented with delegations headed by dignitaries such as East Timor’ charismatic leader, Jose Alexandre Xanana Gusmao, Guinea-Bissau’s Home Affairs Minister Carlo Pinto Pereira and Mozambique’s Provincial Governors Lucas Jeremias and Abdul Noonmahomed of Mozambique.

A series of successful seminars and meetings were held concurrently, such as “Resolving International Trade & Investment Disputes Through Arbitration and Conciliation”, “Macao International Trade & Economic Co-operation” and “Macao and International SME’s Development”.

Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute will contact participants, to solicit their views and suggestions to make the forthcoming Macao International Trade and Investment Fair an even bigger success.

The 7th MIF will be held between 24-27 October 2002. The role of Macao as a regional business co-operation platform for SMEs will be featured at the Fair, while the highlight of this year’s MIF will be “Leisure Macao”.

Theme of the Event: “Green Enterprises for Sustainable Development”
The 3rd Eureka (MEETS) Asia Event to be held in Macao in November

The next “Eureka (MEETS) Asia” fair will be held in Macao in November 2002. The theme is “Green Enterprises for Sustainable Development”. It is expected that more than 120 exhibition booths will be available. The fair will be a good occasion for scientific research institutes from Europe and Asia to exchange information and find co-operation partners.

In order to promote pan-European co-operation and to enhance the industrial and scientific competitiveness of Europe, the prestigious Eureka plan was founded in 1985. It now has 32 member states. The Eureka plan is a transnational, market-orientated high-tech research and development organisation, which initiates a great variety of research projects. The biggest project once involved more than 100 partners (co-operative enterprises) with a volume of 3.8 billion euros; the smallest project may have only two partners with a volume of less than 500,000 euros. The member-states’ governments are the main contributors to the research and development budget of the Eureka plan.

Thanks to its good relations with Portugal, Macao introduced the Eureka plan in 1998. The fair is held in Macao once every two years, with the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology in both China and Portugal, which offers a good venue for Asia and Europe to exchange information on technological progress. More than 400 enterprises from 20 countries in Asia and Europe participated in the last fair and 700 delegates from domestic and foreign enterprises and scientific research institutes were present. A scientific and technological delegation, led by Minister Zhu Lilan of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, attended the event as well.

The fair this year will be hosted by the Macao SAR government, with IPIM Chairing the Organizing Committee and CPTTM as the Secretariat. The organisers expect that there will be 120 exhibition booths, divided into three categories, respectively, covering environmental protection, natural medicine and information technology. On the margins of the fair, there will be seminars on global trends and technological development in the three fields, as well as workshops and bilateral meetings. Experts will be invited to give speeches on technological development and innovations in their own fields. There will also be high-tech products exhibitions and products promotion