China, Portuguese-speaking countries to strengthen two-way investment in coming three years

China and the Portuguese-speaking countries will put two-way investment as focus of their economic and trade cooperation in the coming three years, said China's Commerce Minister Chen Deming here on Sunday.

Chen made the remarks in a joint press conference with seven high-level representatives from Portuguese-speaking countries, after the third Ministerial Conference of the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-Speaking Countries ended earlier in the day.

"In the past two days, I was quite impressed by the strong willingness to promote two-way investment voiced by ministers of Portuguese-speaking countries attending the forum," said Chen.

To meet the needs, more work should be done to provide information on laws, policies, preferable conditions and key industries in relation to investment to potential investors, Chen added.

Under the theme of "Diversified Cooperation, Harmonious Development", the two-day forum gathered about 1,500 officials and representatives from China and seven Portuguese-speaking member countries, namely Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and Timor-Leste.

Attaching great importance to the conference, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attended Saturday's opening ceremony and announced a serious of measures to help boost development of less-developed Portuguese-speaking countries, including setting up a 1-billion-US- dollar development fund for cooperation.

The fund, which is set to be market oriented, will provide aid to investment between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, especially to the medium- and small-sized investment, said Chen.

An action plan to solidify economic and trade cooperation between the two sides between 2010-2013 was signed by all member countries of the forum Sunday morning, which vows to expand cooperation scale, optimize trade structure and give full play to Macao's unique advantages as link and platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.

A training center for the forum was also set up in Macao, which will help train technical personnel for Portuguese-speaking countries.

"The action plan will help strengthen our ties, and we could expect cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries to step up into a new level," said Manuel Sousa, Cape Verde Minister of State in charge of Infrastructure and Transport in the press conference.

Sponsored by China's Ministry of Commerce and hosted by the government of the Macao Special Administrative Region, the forum was created in Macao in 2003, since when trade volume between China and seven Portuguese-speaking countries soared.

The latest official figures from the Chinese government indicated that the trade volume between China and the Portuguese- speaking countries surged by 57 percent year-on-year to 68.2 billion US dollars in the first three quarters of 2010.
(Source:xinhua)