The governments of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) and Guangdong Province Wednesday signed?in?Macao?an agreement on maritime search and rescue, in a bid to enhance the two sides' efficiency of such operations at sea.

According to the agreement, the two sides will carry out maritime search and rescue operations under the principles of "resource sharing, fast response, prompt effectiveness and mutual assistance."

Meanwhile, the two sides will also establish a data base of maritime search and rescue resources, making annual training schedules, and launch trans-regional maritime search and rescue drills on a nonscheduled basis.

Given the magnitude that maritime accidents sometimes develop into, it needs a great amount of manpower and other resources to carry out the search and rescue operations at sea, so as to minimize the death toll and damage sustained in these accidents to the lowest level, said Wong Soi Man, director of the SAR's Port Authority, after the signing ceremony.

She also said that the SAR government has gradually enhanced Macao's maritime search and rescue capacity by purchasing new rescue vessels and strengthening regional cooperation by signing this agreement.