Local Trade Mission Planned For Beijing Olympics

By 250 News

Prince George, B.C. -  The City of Prince George is one of five communities, thus far, who’ve applied to attend a business program hosted at the BC-Canada Pavilion during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

The program is being funded by the provincial and federal governments.  The cost to local delegates planning to attend would be between $38-hundred and five-thousand-dollars. 

Export Prince George Manager, Wendy Rockafellow, says for a businessperson to go it alone, the same venture would probably be in the neighbourhood of $40-thousand dollars.  "We have prime real estate in downtown Beijing, which will be free to all attending businesses," says Rockafellow, "Businesses taking part will have opportunties for one-on-one meetings, interpretation services, counselling and business matches before we go, and coaching on what to take and what not to take, in terms of protocol."

She says, "The word on the street is that we’ll probably have 40 to 50 delegates, which will make quite an impression both on the main organizers and in terms of us being able to mobilize interest."

Rockafellow says the provincial government has hosted two "Think Asia" workshops for local businesses to generate interest in Asian markets -- one last September and the second, this past week.  She says the Prince George delegation will be made up of community leaders, business owners and a couple of the larger players in local industries, but most will be small- and medium-sized business owners. 

While Prince George submitted the application, she says there is a sentiment that "the more, the merrier" and "we’d like to have the Port of Prince Rupert attend with us because of the port linkages and, then, some of the other communities are sort of mobilizing because of the downturn in the forest industry."

Rockafellow says some of the business opportunties available are:

• for our mineral resources,
• for our wood - particular uses because China, Korea, and Japan all require different kinds of milling
• for two-way investment both in real estate and the financial sector
• for our service firms like engineering, land & resource management, infrastructure development

The deadline to apply for the seven-day trade mission from June 13-June 20, 2008 is the end of March. 

Prince George Mayor Colin Kinsley is attending out-of-town meetings this afternoon and has not yet been available for comment.

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