With financing arrangements now in place, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge that has been envisaged to link up the two special administrative regions with Guangdong's Pearl River Delta region (PRD) is one step closer to reality.

The multi-billion-dollar project will undoubtedly keep the regional economy moving in the short-term, and ensure prosperity in the longer term.

By putting Hong Kong in national perspective, we'll be better positioned to appreciate the benefits that this most developed economy of China is to derive from the mega project.

More than a gigantic physical monument of concrete and steel, the bridge serves as an indication of greater economic integration of Hong Kong and the mainland, a process that has been gaining momentum since the 1997 handover.

Hong Kong's economic interactivity with the mainland in general, and the PRD in particular, was brought to a higher level in 2004 by the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement or CEPA. This landmark free-trade arrangement is set to increase trade and economic flows across the boundary exponentially by removing tariffs from all Hong Kong products and by giving preferential access to the mainland market to a number of Hong Kong service industries and professions.

And thanks in no small part to the Individual Visit Scheme, which allows travelers from dozens of mainland cities to come solo to Hong Kong, a record 17 million mainland visitors arrived in the city last year.

The cross-border flow of goods and passengers is growing at a speed potentially greater than Hong Kong's infrastructure capacity to cope with. The incompatibility of hardware with the actual requirements can deny the city realizing of the full potential offered by the fast-growing PRD region and the rest of the country.

The gross domestic product of the PRD region surpassed that of Singapore in 1998, Hong Kong in 2003 and Taiwan in 2007, while the combined GDP of Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macao is now the fourth largest in Asia, after Japan, South Korea and India.

An early completion of the bridge will certainly help boost Hong Kong's tourism industry and cement its status as a regional logistics hub.

Finally but not to be forgotten, the bridge will create thousands of jobs for Hong Kong at a time when the city is struggling with the effects of global recession leading to record-high unemployment.

(HK Edition 04/15/2009 page1)