In order to expand imports from African countries and promote further development of bilateral trade between China and Africa, China shall give tariff exemption Treatment to the most undeveloped countries in Africa as from January 1, 2005 on part of imported commodities. MOFCOM held a policy briefing in Beijing on Feb. 2 to provide timely information to Chinese enterprises.　　

According to principal of Department of Western Asian and African Affairs of MOFCOM, the tariff exemption policy covered 190 commodities.
　　
The principal pointed out that the average tariff rate of Most-Favored-Nation was 9.8%, and reduced to zero as from Jan. 1 2005. The tariff rate of jewel and semi-jewel products decreased by the biggest margin and reached 35% before exemption.　

According to China's Customs, China's total imports from the 28 countries that shall be benefited from 190 tariff items in 2003 amounted to US$76 million and reached US$208 million in 2004 with a net increase of US$130 million. Calculating by 2004 China's Customs most-favored-nation rate, total Customs revenue amounted to US$9.18 million. He believed that the implementation of the policy would further expand the imports of China from African nations.

In recent years, China-Africa trade turned a momentum of high speed growth, imports and exports structure optimized gradually. China-Africa trade increased from over US$10 million in 1950 to US$100 million in 1960. It took 20 years to grew from US$100 million to 1 billion and spent another 20 years increasing from US$1 billion to US$10 billion, but only 4 years in growing from US$10.8 billion in 2000 to US$30 billion in 2004. Which completely indicated that bilateral trade between China and Africa had a bright prospect and developed rapidly, also showed that the bilateral trade had great potential and much space for development.

According to statistics, China-Africa trade in 2004 broke through US$10 billion for the first time, amounting to US$29.46 billion and up by 58.9% on a year-on-year basis. Of which China's exports to Africa were US$13.82 billion and imports from Africa US$15.65 billion, up by 35.7% and 87.1% respectively. Both imports and exports broke the record of US$10 billion.　　

The principal emphasized that China insisted on the principle of equality and mutual benefit, exchange of needed goods, help each other and mutual development to develop trade and economic relations with African nations. Since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China more than 50 years ago, with the joint efforts of governments and enterprises of China and African nations, scale of China-Africa trade and economic cooperation has expanded step by step, cooperation fields were broadened and level was upgraded. When entering into 21 century, especially after 2000 Beijing Ministerial Conference of China-Africa Cooperation Forum was held, China-Africa trade and economic cooperation came into a new, fast, all-round and steady stage of development. Bilateral cooperation was started in a bigger scale, broader fields and at a higher level.

In the future, Chinese government would take practical steps and measures to go on expanding imports and exports between China and Africa, actively develop investment and cooperation with Africa, keep on providing assistance to African nations within her ability, gradually enlarge cooperation in areas of agriculture, infrastructure construction, natural resources and human resources exploitation etc. to further push economic and social development of both China and Africa.

(Source: Network Center of MOFCOM)

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