中国与中东欧国家一致同意推进贸易和投资
The Ministerial Conference of China and Central &Eastern European countries was held in Ningbo on Sunday. The two sides agreed to lower trade barriers and promote more investment from China.
This ministerial level conference aims to promote trade and investment between China and the 16 Central and Eastern European countries. Gao Hucheng, China’s Commerce Minister says that China encourages more investment into manufacturing and infrastructure construction in Central and Eastern Europe and will help promote products from the 16 countries in China.
"We are seeing trade surplus between China and the Central and Eastern European countries. But through this conference, and the expo, we can see that there are many products from Central and eastern Europe that Chinese consumers are not yet familiar with." Gao Hucheng said, "Many of these products are in great demand. We want to continue to help these products to enter the Chinese market. To achieve trade balance, I think the even more important task is to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Europe, not only in infrastructure construction, but also in manufacturing, so they can export their products to other countries and China."
Officials from the 16 countries believe that there is great potential for trade and investment between the two sides and stress that mutual trust and understanding between the people and governments is key to strengthen cooperation.
"Trade between China and Central and Eastern Europe totalled 55 billion US dollar in 2013. In the first four month of this year, total trade increased 10.5 percent from the same time last year. Among which, import from the 16 countries was up close to 39 percent year on year. China’s ministry of commerce hope that total trade will surpass 60 billion dollars in 2014." Arben Ahmetaj, Minister of Econ. Development & Trade, Republic of Albania said.
