Today, on January 25, 2019 First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine – Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Stepan Kubiv met with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to Ukraine Du Wei.
During the meeting, the status and prospects of fulfilling the current tasks of strengthening Ukraine-China trade and economic relations were discussed. First of all, those achieved during the bilateral meeting between the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Vice President of the People’s Republic of China Wang Qishan in Davos.
“China is a strategic partner of Ukraine, and mutual trade is constantly growing. For 11 months of 2018, Ukraine’s turnover with China amounted to USD 8.82 billion, which is more by USD 1.1 billion as compared to 2017*. Recently, at the highest level, Ukraine and China have agreed that Ukraine-China turnover will reach USD 10 billion a year. It is a pleasure to note that our work in this direction demonstrates obvious progress”, said Stepan Kubiv.
Stepan Kubiv added that such turnover between Ukraine and China may be confirmed, in particular during the Intergovernmental Commission on cooperation during the visit to Ukraine by Vice President of the State Council of China Ma Kai in 2017 and during the meeting with Vice President of the State Council of China Liu He in April 2018. Stepan Kubiv also thanked the Chinese colleagues for their invitation to visit the International Cooperation Forum “One Belt One Way”, which will be held in April 2019 in Beijing.
“We have the effective tools for strengthening cooperation in order to significantly deepen the cooperation in key promising sectors. First of all, it is the Ukrainian-Chinese intergovernmental commission, as well as joint participation of representatives of Ukraine and China in large-scale events, such as Forum “One Belt One Way”, which is an efficient platform for establishing an inter-state dialogue between our countries”, said Stepan Kubiv.
Stepan Kubiv emphasized that the next meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Ukraine-China cooperation should be held in 2019. This will allow to significantly increase the number and effectiveness of joint mutually interesting and successful projects and accelerate the implementation of existing areas of cooperation.
* In 2017, the Ukraine-China turnover amounted to USD 7.69 billion and grew by 17.9% as compared to 2016.