Secretary for Health Prof Lo Chung-mau met a delegation led by Guangdong Provincial Medical Products Administration (GDMPA) General Director Jiang Xiaodong today, with both sides agreeing to further deepen collaboration in relevant areas. Prof Lo said the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government expressed its sincere gratitude to the GDMPA for its staunch support for Hong Kong in the past, including the implementation of the initiatives of, among others, the measure of using Hong Kong registered drugs and medical devices used in Hong Kong public hospitals in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and streamlining of the approval procedures for Hong Kong registered traditional proprietary Chinese medicines (pCms) for external use to be registered and sold in the Mainland. The Government and the GDMPA agreed at the meeting to further deepen collaboration on the regulation of Chinese medicines (CM), the formulation of Greater Bay Area Chinese medicine standards,
Secretary for Financial Services & the Treasury Christopher Hui today expressed his gratitude to various listed issuers in Hong Kong for their support to the proposal of setting up a renminbi (RMB) stock trading counter.
Mr Hui stated that further to the help rendered by the Legislative Council Panel on Financial Affairs regarding the Government's proposed measures to promote the issuance and trading of RMB stocks in Hong Kong and enhance the trading mechanism, a number of listed issuers have also backed the proposal.
Such listed issuers will actively explore the feasibility of setting up a new RMB trading counter for their issued shares.
Mr Hui explained that listed issuers who indicated their support today include Hang Seng Index constituent stocks with promising turnover.
“Their participation is a vote of confidence to the development of RMB securities in Hong Kong, which will be conducive to our promotion work to other issuers, enabling Hong Kong to gradually enhance its dual-currency stock market to be denominated and traded in both Hong Kong dollars and RMB.”
Furthermore, he pointed out that promoting the issuance and trading of RMB stocks in Hong Kong will take RMB internationalisation to the next level, catering for the escalating demands from global investors for RMB asset allocation and further consolidating the city's status as an offshore RMB business hub.
The Government will continue to assist the issuers in setting up RMB trading counters and actively take forward the implementation work with relevant Mainland institutions, he added.
The Financial Services & the Treasury Bureau briefed the LegCo Panel on Financial Affairs on the legislative proposal to exempt the stamp duty on stock transfers for specified transactions conducted by market makers for dual-counter stocks, so as to promote the liquidity of RMB-denominated stocks and price efficiency, and facilitate trading by investors.
The Government is preparing the legislative amendments with a view to introducing the bill into LegCo within this year.
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