The Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) – the organizing entity – does not have the event scheduled for 2024, assuring our newspaper that the event will return to the calendar in 2025.
PLATAFORMA also asked what motivated the decision not to hold the 2nd edition of C-PLPEX in 2024, to which IPIM replied that this year’s calendar did not allow it to be organized, due to the incompatibility of the entities involved in the process. However, sources close to the process tell us that they don’t understand why the authorities chose to break with tradition.
However, after our newspaper reported that C-PLPEX would not continue this year – the original news was only published in the print edition of this Friday (20th) – the event’s website became unavailable, having resumed normal operations some time later.
C-PLPEX replaced PLPEX (Portuguese-Speaking Countries Products and Services Exhibition) as part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Macau Forum last year. PLPEX had been held since 2015, making it the first exhibition within another event, namely the Macau International Fair (MIF). However, in 2017, it began to be held independently – parallel to MIF – and continued this way until 2023, when it started incorporating Chinese products and services (C-PLPEX).
Despite the format change last year, this is the first time in nine years that the exhibition dedicated to Portuguese-speaking countries’ products has not been held.
In turn, the 29th MIF, which will take place between October 16 and 19, highlights an exhibition space for Portuguese-speaking products – something that hasn’t happened since the beginning of PLPEX.
According to IPIM, the 2024 MIF will feature 150 booths dedicated to Portuguese-speaking countries, covering sectors such as food and beverages, finance, science and innovation, medicine, cross-border e-commerce, cultural and creative products, and professional services.
A series of activities related to Portuguese-speaking countries will also be organized, such as business meetings, seminars on the business environment, wine and coffee competitions.
“As the event organizer, IPIM is actively carrying out preparatory work to build on the success of the first edition [of C-PLPEX], further optimize the process, enrich the content, and improve service quality in order to provide an even better platform for exchange and cooperation between Chinese and Portuguese companies and people from all walks of life, and to fully enhance Macau’s role as a Sino-Portuguese platform to promote economic and trade cooperation,” IPIM adds.
