Macau may become the bridge that allows the Shenzhen special economic zone to increase its trade relations with Portuguese-speaking countries, the mayor of Shenzhen Xu Qin said Thursday in Macau.

At the end of the 2014 annual Shenzhen-Macau cooperation meeting, attended by the Chief executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR), Chui Sai On, Xu Qin said that Shenzhen had already seen positive results from making use of Macau’s role as a services platform for economic and trade cooperation between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries.

“We would like to see products from our main industries entering Portuguese-speaking countries and I think that Macau ahs a role to play for that to happen,” said Xu Qin adding that Macau was “irreplaceable” as a platform for boosting economic and trade relations between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries.

The mayor of Shenzhen municipality said he had told the Macau authorities of “our wish to boost environmental cooperation, particularly in the use of electric vehicles,” and noted that these vehicles were increasingly used in the special economic zone where there are over 6,000 private electric vehicles and 4,000 electric public transport vehicles.

After the meeting, the heads of the trade and tourism promotion departments of Shenzhen and Macau signed a protocol to boost trade cooperation and a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in tourism.

According to the protocol on trade, Shenzhen and Macau will exchange information about trade and investment cooperation to improve the two-way consultation process, encourage and support companies from both territories to diversify trade cooperation, organise exchange visits, actively take part in exhibitions organised by each territory and drive Macau’s role as a platform to drive trade between Shenzhen and the Portuguese-speaking countries.

Under the terms of the memorandum of understanding on tourism, Shenzhen and Macau will continue to improve communication and cooperation between their tourism teams, create communication channels to discuss tourism projects, joint trips into the interior of China to promote tourism and support promotional activities by each of the territories. (macauhub)