The seventh joint meeting on Guangzhou's assistance to Meizhou was held in Guangzhou on Feb. 17th, when Zhang Guangning, the member of the standing committee of the provincial committee and secretary of Guangzhou Municipal Committee, Guangzhou mayor Wan Qingliang, Municipal secretary Li Jia, deputy secretary and Mayor Zhu Zejun of Meizhou were present.
Zhu Zejun indicated that Meizhou was applying for building a high-speed railways linking Huizhou which was expected to be under construction within two or three years. When the railway is completed, it will take only one and a half hours to reach Meizhou from Guangzhou. In addition, Meizhou is fastening the construction of highway from Meizhou to Guangzhou, and after its completion, the journey from Meizhou to Guangzhou will take only three hours.
On February, 2009, the sixth joint meeting on Guangzhou's assistance to Meizhou was held. According to the general plan of "assisting key projects, offering practical ideas and help the fundamental", Guangzhou implemented 17 trade programs amounting to 2.135 billion RMB, push 10 enterprises to enter industrial parks in Meizhou, assisted 778 collective economic programs and 588 programs for public welfare.
Zhu Zejun said, thanks to the assistance of Guangzhou, Meizhou's economic strength had kept increasing. In 2010, Meizhou's GDP registered 61.2 billion RMB, up 14 percent. In terms of the increase rate of economy, Meizhou ranked 10th in Guangdong Province, the highest number in 15 years. The local general financial budgetary revenue reached 3.895 billion RMB, up 26.6 percent, with the increase rate ranking the 8th in the province. The urban residents' disposable income and farmers' net income increased by 12.3 percent and 9.8 percent respectively.
According to available statistics, since 2003, Guangzhou have allocated 1 billion RMB to Meizhou, including 0.25 billion RMB into Meizhou's industrial park, 0.35 billion RMB into the program "households having plan, persons taking responsibilities', 0.32 billion RMB of voluntary funds, etc. In addition, Guangzhou have push forward more than 100 trade and economic cooperation programs totaling 8.8 billion RMB, trained 28 thousand people and created jobs for 298 thousand people.
(Translated by Guangzhou Association of Foreign Affairs Translators)
