PORTUGAL is aggressively wooing Hongkong investors to Madeira island, which is being promoted as an international business centre, a fast developing free trade zone and an up-and-coming offshore financial centre.
Mr Jorge Veiga Franca, executive senior manager of Madeira Development Co, said the island attracted a Hongkong jeans manufacturer 18 months ago and was now processing two applications.
One is a joint venture involving Hongkong and Chinese capital to set up a footwear factory and the other is from a Japanese company for setting up a factory for smoking fish.
''An investor can get up to 75 per cent of total physical cost [in the form of subsidy grants from the European Commission] and also grants for training local people,'' Mr Franca said.
He added that the jeans manufacturer had recently obtained a second grant from the EC for training people.
A company would receive about US$2,000 per job created and the amount would be doubled if the job was a technical one, he said.