Distinguished Guest, Ladies and Gentlemen: Good Morning!
You may know an old Chinese saying: It is always a pleasure to greet a friend from afar. On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to express our warm welcome and best wishes to all of you.
Coal is one of the major important energy resources in the world. Rational development and efficient utilization of coal is critical to the social and economic growth. Coal exploration has a long history, and coal miners has been praised as the"Envois of brightness and warmth. We are very proud of the glorious cause we have been doing!
At the new era, we witnessed the social and economic development as well as scientific and technological progress, dramatic changes have taken place in the global coal industry. Coal demand continues to increase; enterprise restructuring is speeding up, production efficiency has greatly improved, coal utilization has become diversified.[dai'və:sifai], clean coal technology has caught worldwide attention, and the cooperation and collaboration between coal companies is much more frequent and closer. Strengthening international economic cooperation has become the natural
choice for countries around the world.
Based on our common understanding, we at Shenhua Group would propose that, in order to promote the cooperation and development in mining industry, we shall establish a good platform for the major coal plays in the world to have more communications and exchanges and promote multilateral cooperation, so as to jointly promote the cooperation and development of the global coal industry as a whole.
I am glad that our colleagues from different countries have given us the valuable assistance. Many companies have expressed their willingness to join the platform. After having an overall consideration of the production scale, operation measures and proficiency of coal companies, we invited 15 companies from 11 countries such as Australia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, America, Viet Nam and China to be the co-founders of the platform. We believe these companies are very influential in the global coal industry.
