NEW World Development is making final efforts to reach an agreement with Cathay Pacific Airways on the joint-venture Tianhe airport development in Wuhan. Henry Cheng Kar-shun, managing director of New World, said after launching the membership drive of the Shenzhen Dynasty Club yesterday that talks were still continuing with Cathay. He expected a decision would be made on whether Cathay would join as a partner in the airport development. The other partners include the Wuhan authorities. Discussions between New World and Cathay are intended to resolve the differences on their equity shareholdings in the project. New World has a 35 per cent interest and it is offering to sell 10 per cent to Cathay. However, it was said that Cathay was interested in a bigger stake. Mr Cheng said New World would press ahead with the one billion yuan (about HK$1.34 billion at the official rate) venture even if Cathay was not involved. He also said New World had not pulled out of the Beijing department store development plan but admitted the project's progress had been delayed by disagreements on the terms of co-operation. ''Discussions are still under way. We have not put the project on the shelf,'' he said. Mr Cheng said New World's investment and expansion plans in China would proceed according to schedule and would not be affected by the country's macro-economic controls. ''China's recent policy is a very good one, which will benefit future economic growth,'' he said. He said his group had already pumped about $2.5 billion into its various projects in China, with a further $2 billion to be invested over the next two years. Mr Cheng also said the company was arranging a syndicated loan of about $1.5 billion to finance the $2.7 billion joint development of the Mass Transit Railway Corp's headquarters site in Kowloon Bay.
