The number of positive factors encouraging growth of trade between China and Russia is permanently increasing, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce Gao Feng said on Thursday, TASS reports.
"In general, the number of factors having positive impacts on the growth of the Chinese-Russian economy is permanently going up," he said. "In future, we plan to take, jointly with the Russian side, encouraging measures to optimize the structure of bilateral trade, to improve the quality of corresponding transformation processes, to create new stimuli to prompt its development."
Gao Feng cited official statistics indicating that trade relations between the two countries will continue upwards dynamics in the next few months to make it possible to exceed a threshold of $100 billion in bilateral trade in 2018.
According to China’s customs services, trade between China and Russia went up by 27.3% in January-April 2018, to reach $31.1 billion. China’s exports to Russia went up by 21.1%, to exceed $13.9 billion. Import of Russian-made products and services jumped by 32.8% to stand at $17.2 billion.
In 2016, Russia-China trade went up by 2.2% on the previous year and amounted to $69.52 billion. In 2017, the figure went further up by 20.8%, to $84.07 billion.