Forum | Portuguese environmental experience arrives at MIECF

The 2019 edition of the Macau International Environmental Cooperation Forum (MIECF) will benefit from Portuguese experience in environmental and green taxation, gathered during an exchange visit from the Pan Pearl River Delta region to Portugal.

Agostinho Vong Wai Lon, head of the business delegation and executive director of the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), said that the visit was a result of previous visits by representatives of the Pan-Delta governments, which for the first time included a representative of the Greater Bay Area Policy Office.

“We also hope these issues can be deepened in the Greater Bay area,” Vong Wai Lon told Macauhub in Lisbon on Friday at the end of the exchange visit.

In the Portuguese capital, after a visit to Luxembourg, the delegation met with the Bank of Portugal, the Portuguese Environment Agency, as well as EDP – Energias de Portugal and Banco Comercial Português, which are both part Chinese-owned.

There was also a dinner with government representatives from the provinces and regions of the Pearl River Pan-Delta and Portuguese officials in the area of finance and environmental protection.

Agostinho Vong Wai Lon said that objectives had been achieved, including deepening knowledge about environmental protection and green taxation in the two European countries.

“The result we got during this visit is that soon we can share this experience of Europe with the Forum participants in March at the MIECF,” he told Macauhub.

The head of IPIM said that the policy defined by the government of the Macau Special Administrative Region is to achieve diversification of the economy, which implies developing “financing with Macau characteristics.”

In addition to the theme of environmental protection, this year’s exchange visit focused on “acquiring some information on green taxation,” to be taken as a reference for legislation to be adopted in Macau, said the head of the business delegation and executive member of IPIM.

The trip to Luxembourg was due to similarities between Macau and the European principality, namely the size of their economies, but also the fact that both have undergone periods of transformation, which in Luxembourg’s case turned it into “a financial centre of Europe,” according to Vong Wai Lon.