HONG KONG - The Chinese central government and the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region signed a supplement to an important trade agreement on Thursday to give HK firms greater and easier access to the Mainland market for tourism, securities and banking services, among others.

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The Supplement VII to the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), representing the seventh expansion since 2004, was signed by John Tsang, financial secretary of the HKSAR government, and Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Zengwei in Hong Kong at a ceremony witnessed by HKSAR Chief Executive Donald Tsang.

The new supplement of CEPA provides 35 market liberalization and trade and investment facilitation measures in 19 sectors. Among them, 27 are liberalization measures in 14 service sectors, of which eight are measures for "early and pilot implementation."

The new supplement further relaxes Mainland's market accesses in the 14 service sectors, including medical services, technical testing, analysis and product testing, specialty design, distribution, banking, securities, social services, tourism, qualification examinations for professionals and technicians as well as individually-owned stores.

Among them, "technical testing, analysis and product testing" and "specialty design" are new sectors, bringing the total number of liberalized Mainland's service sectors under CEPA from 42 to 44.

The service liberalization measures under the new supplement will take effect from January 1, 2011.