The Portuguese-speaking Countries Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Greater Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau (China) was established in January 2024, and will be based in Macao. Its president and co-founder is Forum Macao’s former Deputy Secretary-General Rodrigo Brum.
The new Chamber’s objective is to promote trade and deepen economic ties between nine Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs) – namely, Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste – and China. It will do this through helping companies and entrepreneurs from the PSCs realise investment and business opportunities by providing services and advice, as well as holding missions and conferences, Brum told Macao News.
“The genesis for the Chamber of Commerce and Industry began to take shape while I was serving as Deputy Secretary-General of Forum Macao [between 2017 and 2020] and encountered first-hand some challenges in dealing with companies from Portuguese-speaking countries,” he said. Mozambican-born Brum has been closely involved with Macao since the 1990s.
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According to Brum, representatives from each of the Chamber’s member states will be actively involved in its overall management. Each will identify the specific obstacles they need to overcome in order to better operate in the Chinese market.
“We know, for example, that China imposes very strict import regulations, which have not always favoured PSC companies – and this is clearly an area that needs to be addressed,” he said.
Another focus will be facilitating dialogue with officials in both Macao and China “to convey the needs and challenges of PSC companies,” Brum said. That, he noted, was very much in line with a recent speech by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, where he expressed willingness to listen to companies and their struggles.
[See more: China’s trade deficit with Portuguese-speaking countries swells to US$74 billion]
“We want to have significant representation in order to be heard, which has not been possible for the companies of the PSCs until now – precisely because there wasn’t an organisation like the one we just established,” said Brum.
The new Chamber also aims to promote knowledge about the likes of import regulations, conditions for attracting investment and company registrations between the nine PSCs themselves.
