Chinese vice premier calls for further expansion of Sino-Indian trade ties

New Delhi, Mar. 27 (ANI): Hailing the rapidly growing Sino-Indian trade ties, visiting Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu has urged New Delhi to further expand economic relations between the two countries.

Xinhua quoted Hui as saying that Sino-Indian bilateral trade rose from 2.9 billion U.S. dollars to 51.8 billion U.S. dollars from 2000 to 2008, making China India's second largest trade partner and India China's biggest trade partner in South Asia.

Addressing Indian businessmen and Chinese entrepreneurs based in New Delhi on Friday, Hui said that China has built infrastructure projects in India worth 11.1 billion dollars in the past few years and invested 260 million dollars in the fields of telecom, software and pharmaceutical industry.

India has made 300 million dollars of investment in China, he added.

Hui promised that China would provide more export and investing opportunities to Indian enterprises, so that bilateral trade can develop in a more balanced way.

"China is working on expanding domestic consumption, this will also provide a lot of business opportunities for Indian and other foreign enterprises in China... Such cooperation will benefit not only the two countries, but also the whole world," he said.

Hui also proposed that China and India increase strategic trust to push forward cooperation of bilateral benefit.

"The economies of China and India are mutually supplementary to a great extent. The two countries can take advantage of each other 's technological strong points in IT, manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure, energy saving and environment protection," he said.

He indicated that China and India can work together to safeguard common interests, such as: international financial crisis, reform of global economic management structure, pushing forward WTO Doha Round talks and coping with global warming. (ANI)