On May 15 local time, witnessed by the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and the Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, the Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng and the Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Heraldo Munoz signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the Upgrading of China-Chile Free Trade Agreement between the Ministry of Commerce of PRC and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile in Santiago, the capital of Chile, agreeing to discuss the possibilities of upgrading the FTA. Therefore, the work group of the two parties will launch the joint study of upgrading the FTA before August this year.
The China-Chile FTA was signed in November 2005, and came into effect in October 2006, covering mainly trade and cooperation of goods. Later, the supplementary agreements on service trade and investment were signed and implemented. The China-Chile FTA was the first FTA signed by China and Latin American countries, and also one of the FTAs with the highest liberalization level of China. Up to January 1, 2015, the tariff concession of trade goods according to the agreement had been executed completely.
The signing and implementation of the China-Chile FTA bolstered the rapid development of the bilateral economic and trade relations. According to the statistics of Chinese customs, the bilateral trade volume reached US$ 34.152 billion in 2014, 4.8 times that before the implementation of the agreement (2015). China has become the largest trade partner, the largest export markets and the second largest import sources of Chile, and Chile has become the third largest trade partner of China in Latin America.