Vice Premier Dragnea announces start of negotiations on Romania – Hong Kong double taxation agreement
Vice Prime Minister Liviu Dragnea declared on Thursday after his meeting with the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region K.Y. Leung that Romania and Hong Kong will start negotiations for the signing of the double taxation agreement that was already discussed last summer during Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s visit to China.
‘We agreed to speed up the signing of a double taxation agreement between Hong Kong and Romania. The Government approved on January 29 a memorandum providing for the start of negotiations for the signing of this (…) important agreement, given that Romanian exports account for 80 percent of Romania’s commercial relations with Hong Kong, therefore a double taxation agreement benefits primarily the Romanian companies,’ said Dragnea at the end of the roughly 45-minute meeting which took place at the residence of the Chinese official.
According to the Romanian Vice Premier, ‘the teams of negotiators will meet in April, probably somewhere around the 7th of the month.’
Vice Premier Liviu Dragnea is paying a working visit to China over March 20 – 26, and will have high-level meetings with Chinese officials to review the stage of the implementation of the agreements signed in November last year, during the visit to Bucharest of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
The Romanian delegation is scheduled to meet on Friday, in Shenzhen, with representatives of energy and communications companies: ZTE Corporation, Huawei and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN).
In the second part of the visit, Vice Prime Minister Dragnea will have a bilateral meeting with Vice Prime Minister of the Republic of China Zhang Gaoli.
Romanian wines to be seriously promoted in Hong Kong starting this year
Romanian Vice Prime Minister Liviu Dragnea and the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region K.Y. Leung discussed on Thursday about the promotion of the Romanian wines in Hong Kong, the world’s largest wine promotion market.
‘We discussed the possibility that the Romanian wines be seriously promoted in Hong Kong, since there is a particularity here: Hong Kong is the largest platform for the promotion and trading of wine in the world. There are great tax breaks, wines can be brought here with zero taxes as compared to other places and they can be taken from here and then further sold cheaply and very efficiently in the area. We agreed that Romania, starting this year, should participate a serious pavilion in the exhibition to be put in November and the governor also promised he will promote Romanian wines because he likes them, the red wines in particular’, Dragnea said at the end of the meeting with the Chinese official.
He added that the anticipated gains from the participation in such an event are very high, while the promotion costs are low.
‘There will not be high (promotion) costs, costs are low in such situations. Romania has been present with a pavilion in such exhibitions every year, but Romania did not attend last year, for various reasons. We want to resume such attendance from 2014, since the gains are much higher versus the costs at this exhibition’, Dragnea explained.
The Romanian senior official announced he would have an ‘applied’ discussion with Agriculture Minister Daniel Constantin on this matter on coming back home.
Credit: ActMedia
