The extraordinary ministerial meeting of the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries has once again been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this time from this month to early next year, public broadcaster TDM-Rádio Macau reported yesterday.
The report quoted a “source linked to” the forum, a locally based organisation headed by the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) in Beijing.
The report pointed out that the forum’s sixth conference was previously scheduled for October last year, but because of the pandemic it was postponed to mid-November this year.
Rádio Macau said that the conference was now slated to take place in Macau in January or February 2022.
The last – usually triannual – conference of the forum took place in Macau in 2016.
The report noted that the first postponement was announced in 2018, one year before the 6th ordinary conference then slated for the autumn of 2019. Due to the fact that both the chief executive election and the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of Macau’s return to the motherland were held in 2019 the conference was postponed to 2020. However, the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic last year resulted in a further postponement of the conference.
Macau confirmed its first novel coronavirus case on January 22, 2020.
Initially, this year’s conference was scheduled for June 29-30. Owing to the pandemic the conference was later postponed to October this year and then to the middle of this month. It was also reclassified as an extraordinary ministerial meeting and planned to be held in two segments – online for the participating ministers and in person in Macau by the ambassadors from the Portuguese-speaking countries accredited in Beijing, according to the report.
