A vehicle from Tajikistan passes the Karasu port in Tajik Autonomous County of Taxkorgan, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on June 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Huan)
BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region made remarkable progress in promoting the Belt and Road construction during the 13th Five-year Plan period from 2016 to 2020, according to the yidaiyilu.gov.cn on Tuesday.
Xinjiang deepened economic and trade exchanges and cooperation with the governments of five neighboring countries of China, and signed intergovernmental cooperation agreements with regions of countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan to have a regular joint meeting mechanism.
In particular, since 2020, it has actively promoted international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control, established border epidemic prevention and joint control mechanisms with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and held three video conferences to ensure epidemic prevention and control at border ports and the normalized customs clearance.
In terms of the facilities connectivity, it opened 118 bilateral international road transport routes with neighboring countries, accounting for one third of the country's total.
During the period from 2016 to 2020, Xinjiang added 1,233 kilometers of expressways, with the total mileage exceeding 5,500 kilometers, and completed international road freight transportation of 18.94 million metric tons (tonnes). A total of 22 cross-border optical cables were opened to connect with neighboring countries.
During the 13th Five-year Plan period, Xinjiang carried out economic and trade cooperation with 170 countries and regions, with the import and export trade volume reaching 703.799 billion yuan, an average annual increase of 5.7 percent.
During the period, the region saw the amount of foreign investment in actual use stand at 1.35 billion U.S. dollars, and its outbound direct investment (ODI) stood at 4.63 billion U.S. dollars, covering more than 50 countries and regions.
From 2016 to 2020, Xinjiang witnessed 4,238 trips made by Europe-bound freight trains, with an average annual growth of 49.2 percent.
Xinjiang also vigorously developed the cross-border renminbi business. The actual cross-border settlement receipts and payments in the region reached 155.07 billion yuan, covering 106 countries and regions. It carried out cross-border renminbi settlement with more than 60 percent of the countries along the Belt and Road routes.
The region constantly promoted the people-to-people exchanges during the period. It received about 8.83 million foreign tourists with the tourism consumption of 3.78 billion U.S. dollars. More than 300 inter-school exchange and cooperation agreements were signed with 23 countries and regions. (Edited by Hu Pingchao with Xinhua Silk Road, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
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