Chinese Vice-Minister of Commerce Gao Yan and the Minister of Finance of Afghanistan Eklil Ahmad Hakimi jointly presided over the 2nd Meeting of China-Afghanistan Joint Committee of Economics and Trade in Beijing on June 26. Both sides exchanged views on the relevant issues such as further promoting the trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.
Gao said that Afghanistan is a friendly neighbor to China. In October 2014, President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai successfully conducted a state visit to China. Leaders of the two countries reached extensive consensus on promoting the bilateral relationship and showed the way for the trade and economic relationship between China and Afghanistan. In the past five years, the cooperation in the trade and economic fields of the two countries has made remarkable progress, the scale of bilateral trade has been expanded 1.3 times, the investment inventory of Chinese enterprises in Afghanistan has been expanded 1.8 times and the engineering contract turnover completed by Chinese enterprises have accumulated to 2.8 times of the last five years. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic ties between China and Afghanistan. In the past 60 years, Chinese government and its people have always sincerely supported the development of Afghanistan, provided assistance to Afghanistan within its capacity and built many projects with social influence such as the restoration work of Parwan Irrigation, the hospital of the Republic of Kabul, the multifunction center of the Office of President and the teaching building of the Department of Chinese at Kabul University. At present, the “Belt and Road Initiative” proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping has entered into the implementation stage. Afghanistan is an important country along the line of the Silk Road Economic Belt. China praises that Afghanistan positively responds and participates in the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and China will work with Afghanistan as well as other countries along the line to give full play to the comparative advantages of each other, promote the docking of the development strategy, improve the level of trade and economic cooperation and realize a mutual beneficial and common development.
Hakimi said that Afghanistan regards China as an important strategic cooperative partner. The selfless assistance provided by China vigorously supports the post-war reconstruction of Afghanistan, for which Afghanistan are deeply thankful. In the past five years, the trade and economic cooperation between the two countries has been smooth and new and bigger development opportunities will be faced by the two countries. In 2014, when President Ghani visited China, leaders of the two countries conducted fruitful discussions on promoting the trade and economic cooperation in relevant key fields. Afghanistan is working hard with China to positively implement the results. Afghanistan thanks the Chinese government for sending working groups to Afghanistan to carry out the assistance plan and the planning work of the infrastructure construction. Afghanistan hopes to strengthen the cooperation with China in such three prior fields as road and railway, water supply and energy and agriculture, and welcomes Chinese enterprises to actively participate in these fields in all feasible ways. Afghanistan thinks highly of the joint construction of the “Belt and Road Initiative” proposed by President Xi Jinping, praises the vision and the road map of jointly constructing the “Belt and Road Initiative” proposed by China and hopes to play an important role in the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt.
Both sides also conducted friendly, frank and practical discussions on issues such as the bilateral trade, investment, assistance and human resource development cooperation, the construction of the free trade zones of the two countries and the key projects invested by Chinese enterprises in Afghanistan.
After the meeting, Gao Yan and Hakimi signed relevant cooperative documents.
