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development potential, not to mention the numerous townships with overseas Chinese connections. These are the favourable factors that are attracting investments and the shift of industrial undertaking from Hong Kong. The only unfavourable factor is the traffic problem. Zhuhai suffers from a lack of direct link with Hong Kong across the sea, and this has adversely affected the scale and level of its development. It is now an urgent task to overcome this natural barrier that exists on the Pearl River Estuary.
Sixthly, the proposed bridge will help preserve the economic prosperity of the Hong Kong region. Hong Kong is an international centre in the fields of finance, trade, transport and telecommunication.
The rapid growth of Hong Kong's re-exports, of which the Mainland remains the largest source, has further upgraded the status of Hong Kong. At present, Hong Kong is at the top of the world in terms of container throughput while Macau is also moving fast in its economic development. With the completion of the proposed bridge, Hong Kong will get an additional road link with the inland areas.
This will undoubtedly further expand the room of development for Hong Kong's economy. Furthermore, traffic between Hong Kong and Macau will become more convenient not only because of the shortened travelling time (it takes about 30 minutes only) but also because there will be no more traffic delay arising from typhoon and fog and that traffic between the two places is also possible even at night time. Therefore, viewing from whatever angles, we believe that the proposed bridge project would play a very significant role in preserving a long-term prosperity and development of both Hong Kong and Macau.
Transport Commission of Zhuhai Municipality 16 April 1993