Workers work in a factory of Agricola Garces in Mostazal, Chile on Jan. 19, 2018. Chilean cherries have been viewed by Chinese customers as a "trademark" from the Latin American country. (Xinhua/Xu Rui)
BEIJING, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- China's trade with Chile increased 5.1 percent year on year in the first ten months, with its imports from Latin American country up 10 percent, Gao Feng, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce told a press conference on Thursday.
In recent years, China and Chile have given full play to the role of cooperation mechanisms under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Chile Free Trade Zone (FTZ), harvesting fruitful results in economic and trade cooperation. In particular, since the updating of the free trade agreement between Chile and China in March 2019, the number of tariff free products between the two sides has reached 54, making the China-Chile FTZ become China's free trade zone with the highest level of open goods trade, said Gao.
He also mentioned that so far, China has become Chile's largest trading partner, largest import source, largest export destination and largest export market of agricultural products, with the bilateral trade in 2018 and 2019 exceeding 40 billion U.S. dollars.
Cooperation between the two countries in such fields as infrastructure, healthcare, agriculture, energy and mineral resources are highlighted. Up to now, Chinese enterprises have signed more than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars of contracts with their Chilean partners, according to Gao.
The economies of China and Chile are highly complementary, and the two countries have sound cooperation foundation and great development potential. As China enters a new stage of development with higher level of opening up, China-Chile economic and trade cooperation will enjoy greater opportunities, the spokesman said. (Edited by Su Dan with Xinhua Silk Road, sudan@xinhua.org)
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