| Survey on China-Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation in 2005 |
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| Wednesday,January 11,2006 Posted: 21:02 BJT(02 GMT) Center of MOFCOM |
China-Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation started in mid-20th century. With the deepening constantly of reform and opening-up, scale of China-Africa trade and economic cooperation was enlarged step by step in various forms and the cooperation fields were broadened. Since the establishment of China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2000, the bilateral trade and economic cooperation entered into a new stage of all-round, rapid and steady development. Africa became the important area of China to completely utilize the international and domestic markets and resources and to implement market diversification. In 2005, China and African countries maintained close high-level exchanges, which indicated the willing of leaders of China and Africa to further enhance friendly cooperation and strongly push forward the development of China-Africa trade and economic cooperation.
China-Africa Economic Cooperation developed rapidly. Overseas project contracting and investment by Chinese enterprises in Africa maintained a rapid growth. According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, in Jan. through Oct. 2005, value of newly signed contracts for labor service by Chinese enterprises in Africa amounted to US$6.34 billion and turnover reached US$4.61 billion. By the end of Oct. 2005, total 780 thousand Chinese laborers engaged in contracting in Africa. Provisional statistics indicated that Chinese overseas direct investment in Africa amounted to US$175 million.
Scale of aid to Africa was further enlarged and made obvious achievement, and was also an important part of China-Africa Cooperation. With the improvement of our economic strength, China’s aid to Africa expanded its scale step by step. Besides, China trained a big number of professionals for economic construction, and the aid to Africa was genuine, obtained obvious achievements, won the praise of African countries and people, push forward the development of the friendly relations and trade and economic cooperation between China and Africa and was strongly in coordination with the Foreign Affairs of China.
Multi-lateral and bilateral cooperation was further enhanced. Since the establishment of China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2000, it became an important platform to strengthen dialogues and push forward cooperation, and promoted the fast development of both China and Africa in various fields to a great extent. In 2005, China maintained positively implementing measures raised at the second ministerial meeting of the Forum. By now, China has established mechanism of mixed or joint committee on bilateral trade and economic cooperation, which played an active role in coordinating bilateral trade and economic cooperation and proper disposal of problems in the cooperation.
In Sept. 2005, President Hu Jintao put forward 5 important measures at the Meeting on Financing for Development of the UN Summit, aiming at enhancing relations with other developing countries. Meanwhile, he expressed the political will that China hoped to stabilize and reinforce the traditional friendly relations with developing countries in the new era and to realize common development. Africa was a continent collecting most of developing countries, to implement the 5 measures in line with reality would push forward the friendly relations between China and Africa and would enhance trade and economic cooperation. The 3rd Ministerial Meeting and Beijing Summit of China-Africa Cooperation Forum will be held in 2006, which would certainly inject new vitality into China-Africa trade and economic cooperation to further promote in-depth development of China-Africa trade and economic cooperation.
(Source: Network Center of MOFCOM)
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