Minister for Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship Stefan-Radu Oprea pays official visit to Beijing: Romania seeks to cross USD 1 bln mark for exports to China in 2019

Romania’s target for 2019 is to cross the USD 1 bln mark for exports to China, the Ministry for Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship (MMACA) said in a release on Friday. Cutting the deficit in Romania – China bilateral trade was one of the subjects approached by the Romanian side at the 27th Session of the Romania – China Intergovernmental Economic Cooperation Committee organized in China. “The sides set up a working group to improve trade relations and that will also look at the barriers set to Romania’s exports to China, with a view to taking exports past 1 bln US dollars in 2019,” the release said. Minister for Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship Stefan-Radu Oprea, on an official visit to China that is mainly aimed at reducing the trade deficit and promoting Romania as investment destination, met on Friday with China’s Assistant Minister of Commerce Ren Hongbin. The two officials signed the protocol of this year’s session of the Romania – China Intergovernmental Economic Cooperation Committee, which sets out the guidelines for bilateral cooperation until the next session. The main areas approached are energy, infrastructure, IT & C, advanced technologies, environmental protection and tourism. Strengthening bilateral cooperation in agriculture and Romanian export of agri-food products to China were the highlights of the talks. “Our message was that the Romanian economy has the potential to support an accelerated growth of exports. We also showed that the Romanian government, in a business-oriented approach, has taken a series of measures to create a friendly business climate, promoting an equal and non-discriminatory treatment of all economic partners, regardless of their provenance,” Oprea said. The Romanian minister invited the Chinese official to Romania for the next session of the Committee, which will run concomitantly with an economic forum attended by representatives of state-owned and private companies. The visit of the Minister for Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship to Beijing, November 1 to 4, also included talks with officials of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and large companies to promote public-private partnership projects. According to official data, Romania – China trade amounted to an aggregate of 4 billion dollars in the first eight months of 2018, of which Romanian exports to China account for 604.02 million dollars (up 14.81 pct YoY) and imports from China stand at 3.43 billion dollars (up 26.31 pct YoY).