Chairman Wu Bangguo offered a four-point proposal in Santiago Wednesday for the enhancement of China-Chile economic and trade cooperation.

Delivering a speech at the Chile-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum, Wu said the economies of China and Chile are highly complementary and he hoped the two countries would further improve economic ties in four areas.

Implementing Free Trade Agreement

Chile is the first Latin American country that has recognized China's full market economy status and it is also the first Latin-American nation that has reached free trade agreement (FTA) with China.

Wu said the FTA signed by the two governments has covered all the content of commodity trade and its core goal is to reduce tariff and non-tariff trade barriers and improve the conditions of market access.

He said the implementation of FTA will facilitate the commodity trade between the two countries and boost the development of relevant industries.

He urged the two countries to fully use the favorable conditions created by the FTA, continuously improve the pattern of commodity trade, enhance exchanges on information of market and products and help other side to push their products enter the Asian or Latin American markets.

Enhancing Copper Cooperation

Wu highlighted China-Chile cooperation on copper resources, saying that cooperation in this field is of key status in bilateral trade.

Statistics showed that copper trade accounted for nearly half of the total trade volume between China and Chile, which was at 7 billion U.S. dollars in 2005.

In last February, China Minmetals Corporation and Nacional del Cobre de Chile signed a deal on a joint venture to mine copper resources in Chile.

According to the deal, the first-phase of investment in the project involves 550 million dollars, and the total investment will reach 2 billion dollars in the final phase of the cooperation.

The deal represents the first major copper mining project between firms from China, the world's biggest copper consumer, and Chile, the world's No. 1 copper producer.

Wu said he hoped the governments of China and Chile will join efforts to ensure the project to be implemented smoothly.

He also expressed his hope that the two countries will enhance dialogues on policies and improve coordination to ensure bilateral cooperation on copper resources to develop in a fast and healthy way.

Expanding Cooperation on Infrastructure Construction

Wu said both China and Chile are developing countries and are faced with great task of infrastructure construction.

He said China has accumulated rich experience in construction of transportation and telecommunications facilities.

He said with the growth of their economies, China and Chile have increasing demands for infrastructure construction, which could become a new field for bilateral cooperation.

He urged the two sides to take the opportunity and make use of each other's experience and advantages to further upgrade the bilateral cooperation on infrastructure cooperation.

Promoting Cooperation between Enterprises

"Enterprises are the principal part of market, investment as well as bilateral economic and trade cooperation," Wu said.

He said primary products and commodities of low technology took large proportion of China-Chile trade and two-way investment and cooperation between enterprises are relatively weak.

Wu said to improve cooperation between the Chinese and Chilean enterprises is the key to upgrade the quality and level of bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

He urged the two countries to join efforts to promote two-way investment and push the bilateral economic and trade cooperation to extend from commodity trade to two-way investment and industrial and technological cooperation.

"The Chinese government encourages China's enterprises, which are competitive and credible, to seek business opportunities in Chile and we also welcome Chilean enterprises to invest and expand business in China," he said.

Statistics showed that by the end of last June, Chilean enterprises have invested a total of 98 projects in China with the contract value of 125 million U.S. dollars. Twenty-one Chinese enterprises have invested in Chile with the contract value of 27.8 million U.S. dollars.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)