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| Portfolio |
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Mr. Bo Xilai's portfolio covers the overall affairs of the Ministry of commerce.
He is particularly in charge of the General Office and the Department of Human Resources. |
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Add:No.2 Dong Chang'an Avenue,Beijing China (100731)
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| Speech of Mr. Bo Xilai at the Third Ministerial Conference of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation |
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| 2006-11-09 10:12 MOFCOM |
Distinguished Mr. Chairman, Representatives, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Good morning!
Today, ministers for foreign and economic affairs from 48 African friendly countries get together in Beijing to complot cooperation. On behalf of the Ministry of Commerce, I would like to extend warm welcome to all friends here.
Since the 2nd Ministerial Conference in 2003, China-Africa trade and economic cooperation developed rapidly, scale of the cooperation was expanded and level improved step by step on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and win-win.
In the aspect of bilateral trade between China and Africa, in 1971, China resumed its lawful seat in UN with help of many African countries, and the bilateral trade at that time amounted to US$260 million, but hit US$39.7 billion in 2005, up by 150 times. In 2006, China-Africa trade was expected to break through US$50 billion. China's exports of traditional commodities to Africa like textile and garments, light industry and furniture are increasing, share of electromechanical products such as motorcycle, mobile phone, color TV and DVD to total exports turns bigger and made-in-China automobile and plane, even satellite has entered into Africa. On the other hand, African commodities are of characteristics and most of them have been imported at Chinese market such as Egyptian marble, Morocco phosphate fertilizer, copper products of Zambia, cotton of Mali, cocoa of Cote Divoire and Ghana, coffee of Uganda, sesame of Ethiopia, rose of Kenya, vanilla of Madagascar, frozen fish of Guinea-Bissau, cashew of Tanzania, tobacco of Zimbabwe, olive oil of Tunis and diamond of South Africa and Botswana, and enjoy welcome of more and more Chinese consumers.
In order to facilitate African commodities to enter into Chinese market, the government of China granted exemption from import duties on 190 items of commodities for least developed countries. In the first half 2006, China's import of commodities under preferential tax rate treatment from Africa increased by 57% on a year-on-year basis.
Regarding to investment, China's investment in Africa covers various fields like agriculture, telecommunication, energy source, processing and manufacture, catering and service industry. Many Chinese investment enterprises have been established in Africa, playing an active role in promotion of local economic development and increase of employment.
As far as infrastructure construction is concerned, in the past 5 years, Chinese enterprises undertook contracts of more that 6000 kilometers highway construction, over 3400 kilometers railway construction and reconstruction, establishment of 7 power stations with total generating electricity capacity of 3.4 million Kilowatts. Reconstruction of Nigeria railways, Imboulou Hydropower Station of Congo, natural gas pipeline of Libyan, telecom network construction of Angola and newly established speedway project of Algeria build up a bridge connecting China and Africa.
Chinese government and people cherish the brotherhood with African people because of the same bitter experience and disaster of colonial domination suffered in the history, could understand and sympathize with each other. As a developing country, there is a huge development room in eastern China, but many people living in a hard situation in central and western China should be laid eyes on, Now, there are about 200 million people whose living standard could not come up to the UN's criterion of US$1/person per day, and about 60 million disabled persons, Chinese government is confronting with the great pressure of development and poverty relief. But we always provide assistance to African countries within our capacity in Mao Zedong Era. We set up 781 sets of projects in 49 African countries, of which 43 projects are about hospitals, 20 about schools, 30 about gymnasiums, 23 about farms and 18 about power stations and even some about 3000 kilometers highway, which marked the China-Africa friendship. In recent years, Chinese government reduced and relieved RMB10.9 billion debts from heavily indebted poor countries and least developed countries in Africa, provided 37 items of emergency disaster relief and assistance to countries suffered disasters of hurricane, tsunami and earthquake like Madagascar, dispatched 15000 medical workers there and fostered over 10000 talents for Africa.
We also thank African countries for the great support to Chinese development and construction, bringing friendship and brotherhood to the bilateral cooperation.
Mr. Chairman, representatives, ladies and gentlemen,
China-Africa cooperation concerns trade and investment among partners on the basis of equality and we both two sides have strong willing to enhance and enlarge the cooperation, therefore, I would like to put forward the following suggestions:
1, to enlarge China-Africa trade. On the basis of mutual respect and benefit, equal treatment and win-win, China and Africa should make efforts together to enlarge the scale of bilateral trade to improve the trade structure. China has a population of 1.3 billion, and Africa of about 900 million, the two parties have extensive market. China will offer convenience to African commodities to enter into China, maintain widening the scale of products enjoying zero tariff and guarantee the quality of Chinese export commodities.
2, to promote two-way investment. China and Africa could go on taking effective measures to enhance investment facilitation. China will offer more financial support to Chinese enterprises investing in Africa, and main areas of cooperation are infrastructure construction, processing and manufacture in light industry and textile. Chinese government requests domestic enterprises to strive to increase the employment and tax revenue in local regions in the course of investment and production, to pay attention to the environmental protection and actively to take part in the public welfare. China also welcomes African countries to invest in China.
3, to strengthen aid to Africa. China will enlarge the assistance scale to Africa step by step, establish schools and hospitals in Africa at the first stage, maintain enhancing the training of talents for African countries and teach them our experiences of management, transfer technologies in areas of industry and agriculture to assist Africa to increase the capacity of self-development. Besides, China will continue with the decision of debt reduction and relief on African countries and lighten the burden of them on economic development.
4, to frequent personnel exchanges. China and Africa should encourage people of business circle to further enhance the communication and exchanges, make full use of agencies like chambers of commerce and associations as the bridge to strengthen the understanding and create more cooperation opportunities.
Mr. Chairman and friends,
The Ministry of Commerce, as the administrative department in charge of domestic trade and international economic cooperation, would like to make mutual efforts with African counterparts to set up a platform for cooperation among Chinese and African enterprises and create opportunities. The Ministry establishes economic and commercial counselor’s offices in African countries, they are ready for the establishment of China-Africa cooperation bridge in trade, investment and engineering.
Thanks!
(Source: Network Center of MOFCOM)
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