SHENZHEN Good news has emerged in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area since the beginning of 2023. After a three-year separation, Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland resumed a quarantine-free cross-border travel on January 8. A week later, the cross-border railway resumed its operations. The central government scrapped all the remaining curbs on cross-border travel, including COVID 19 testing and travel quota, from Feb 6.
Having gone through a difficult time amid the pandemic-induced economic sluggishness, enterprises in the southern region have finally seen light at the end of the tunnel and are moving actively to embrace a strong bounceback of their business.
More than 2200 jobs were offered at a job fair in Shenzhen in the first week after the Spring Festival holiday, with 64 well-known enterprises, including Chinese electric car maker BYD and cultural and tourism giant OCT Group.
The city is expected to organize 208 job fairs in the first quarter, with over 5,000 enterprises attending, according to Shenzhen's human resources and social security authority.
More than 100 employees will be hired this year by the Hong Kong chain restaurant Tam Chai Yunnan Noodles to fill basic positions such as waiters and chefs, as well as management staff.
We currently operate 20 restaurants on the Chinese mainland. A person named as Lin who is in charge of employment told local media that they plan to add 30 this year.
The theme park is hiring 600 full time and part-time staff at a major job fair in Hong Kong, which was launched by Hong Kong Disneyland on Thursday as it prepares for the growing number of visitors due to the lifting of cross-border travel restrictions.
After border reopening, it will continue to monitor the traffic flow to decide whether to recruit more people or not.
Retail sales of Hong Kong and Macao are expected to grow by 15 percent year-on- year, while that of Macao is expected to grow by up to 20 percent this year, according to a report released by HSBC.
An executive at Express Luck Industrial Shenzhen Ltd, a Hong Kong-owned company in Shenzhen that produces LCD TV, said they are actively preparing to attend the Canton Fair and explore new orders from overseas.
She said that they have 10 production lines in operation, producing 15,000 LCD TVs per day. Our business is expected to grow by 10 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year due to the rebound in terminal devices and demand. The local governments of the mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area, except for Zhaoqing, have set their GDP growth target at 6 percent or above for 2023. In a recent talk with me, a senior executive of an electronic company in Shenzhen said that winter is over and spring has come. We are very positive that this year will be a bumper harvest. She is based in Shenzhen and focuses on reporting on the emerging new economy, driven by tech innovations such as 5 G, big data, artificial intelligence, etc. There are some innovative and innovative businesses in the region.