Ethiopia, China agreed to double trade size

By Tesfa Alem Tekle

January 15, 2010 (ADDIS ABABA) – As part of the new initiative to enhance cooperation with Africa, china this week signed an agreement with Ethiopia to double the existing trade volume within the next few years.

The agreement was signed here in the capital, Addis Ababa, between Ethiopia trade and industry minister Girma Birru and Chinese commerce minister Chen Deming, who is on tour to five African countries leading an economic and trade delegation.

Accordingly, both countries have agreed to expand their trade volume to USD 3 Billion in 2015 from the existing trade volume which currently stands at 1.5 Billion USD.

The agreement covers more than 95 per cent of Ethiopia’s export to China enabling the horn of Africa’s nation to offer preferential market access to export interest to China mainly from the exports of coffee, flowers and agricultural products.

The Chinese minister put forward a four-point proposal on further development of bilateral trade and economic cooperation further expanding its imports from Ethiopia through the use of tariff-free policies.

The Bi lateral agreement reached includes strengthening cooperation in investment and engineering contracts and continuing to encourage strong Chinese firms to invest in Ethiopia.

Chen Deming, who said that his country views Ethiopia as its major economic and trading partner in Africa, expressed belief that the agreement will further enhance the existing trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

Trade exchange between the two countries has been growing by 35.6 per cent annually on average in particular over the past eight years.

With 22 per cent of the projects gone operational, currently some 1000 Chinese projects have been registered to invest in Ethiopia

Meanwhile, The Chinese Delegation has hold Talks with the African Union officials on ways of enhancing relations between Africa and China.

The delegation has also visited the progress of the construction of an AU headquarters fully funded by the Chinese government at a cost of 100 million USD.

A new agreement was also signed on Tuesday between the AU and Chinese government that would enable to get 20 million US dollar to further enforce the construction of the AU headquarters which was launched a year ago.

(ST)