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2016 Business Review XXVI: China-Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Makes Steady Progress

In 2016, the Ministry of Commerce comprehensively implemented the spirits of the 18th National People’s Congress and the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Plenary Sessions of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, thoroughly studied and implemented the series of important speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping. It took planning and promoting the implementation of new trade and economic measures of China-Africa “Ten Cooperation Plans” as the opportunity according to the unified deployment of the Central Party Committee and the State Council, brought into full play China-Africa echelon engagement of bilateral development stage and the complementarity of economic industrial structure, actively strengthened the strategic docking of development, jointly built new growth points of cooperation, promoted the continuous and sound development of China-Africa trade and economic relationship and obtained new progress.

New measures of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation were steadily implemented. 2016 marks the opening year of implementing China-Africa “Ten Cooperation Plans” and US$60-billion financial support initiated by President Xi Jinping at Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. China regarded the implementation of the new trade and economic measures of the “Ten Cooperation Plans” as the mainline of the trade and economic cooperation with Africa, profoundly docked the development strategy with Africa, systematically summarized cooperation projects, designed and built domestic and overseas mechanism and jointly promoted the subsequent work to make positive progress. Among these, cooperation plans on China-Africa industrialization, infrastructure, agricultural modernization, trade investment facilitation are fully and solidly promoted. The subsequent US$5-billion capital increase work of special loans of the development of medium and small sized enterprises of Africa has been successfully completed and the China-Africa capacity cooperation fund of US$10-million of the first-batch of funding has officially opened. In July, China successfully held the coordinators’ summit fruit implementation conference in Beijing and 104 officials of the ministerial level or above from 52 African member countries of the Forum participated in the conference. President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to the conference. During the conference, China informed Africa the progress of the implementation of the new trade and economic measures, held dialogues between principals of the Chinese financial institutions and Africa and signed 20 inter-governmental trade and economic cooperation documents with Africa. These were highly appreciated by Africa, ushering a new hot trend of China-Africa trade and economic cooperation.

High-level visits indicated directions for China-Africa trade and economic cooperation. Since 2016, President Xi Jinping has successively visited Egypt and the League of Arab States, and other leaders of the Chinese government and the Central Party Committee such as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Zhang Dejiang, the Chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Yu Zhensheng successively visited African countries like Zambia, Rwanda, Kenya, Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. Heads of African countries such as Nigeria, Congo, Togo and Mozambique visited China. Heads of the four countries such as South Africa, Chad, Senegal and Egypt came to China to attend the G20 Hangzhou Summit. President Benin came to China to attend the 2nd Forum on Investment in Africa. Premiers of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde attended the 5th Ministerial Conference of China-Portuguese Speaking Countries’ Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum. During these visit, both Chinese and African leaders reviewed friendship, discussed cooperation, sought cooperation and constantly injected strong impetus to the China-Africa trade and economic cooperation.

Inter-governmental cooperation mechanism planned route for the China-Africa trade and economic cooperation. Since 2016, the Ministry of Commerce, together with its counterparts of 9 African countries such as Gabon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Benin, Madagascar, Tanzania, Eritrea, Mauritius and South Africa held the following meetings: a new bilateral joint committee on trade and economics, the trade and economic sub-committee under the 6th conference of China-South Africa bilateral committee, the preparation meeting of the 2nd conference of China-Angola trade and economic guidance committee, the technical negotiation conference of China-South Africa joint working group and the ministerial and working group conference of China-Egypt capacity cooperation mechanism, and the working talks with 22 counterpart ministers from 16 African countries such as Egypt, Eritrea, Algeria and Tanzania. The Ministry of Commerce fully played the leading and planning role of the inter-governmental trade and economic cooperation mechanism, coordinated to promote the major problems and projects in bilateral trade and economic cooperation. During the 10th conference of China-Mauritius Joint Committee on Trade and Economics held in November, both sides jointly signed the MOU on launching the feasible study on China-Mauritius free trade agreement. This is the first joint feasible study of the free trade agreement conducted between China and economy in the African regions.

China’s investment in Africa increased greatly. In January-November 2016, the non-financial direct investment flow from Chinese enterprises to Africa increased 25%, with more than US$3 billion. The main features are as follows. Firstly, the investment in the African countries with abundant resources and rapid economic growth increased greatly. The non-financial direct investment flow to countries such as Ivory Coast, Senegal, Rwanda and Uganda increased more than 100% year on year. Secondly, the platform role and the leverage effect of the trade and economic cooperation zones such as industrial gardens and zones further appeared. The first-phase construction of the expansion area of Egypt-Suez trade and economic cooperation area was officially started and more than 10 world-famous enterprises expressed intention to invest and start business in gardens. Thirdly, the industrial investment and capacity cooperation were promotion at a faster pace. Manufacturing industry accounted for more than 10% of the non-financial direct investment in Africa. The project of South Africa factory of Beijing Auto Mobile Group with US$800-million investment laid a foundation, planning to produce 100,000 automobiles annually. This factory will be the largest automobile manufacturer in South Africa. In the current complex and versatile international and regional situation, China’s investment in Africa continues to increase greatly, embodying Chinese enterprises’ confidence in tapping African market and China’s increasingly anti-risk tenacity in its investment and cooperation with Africa.

China-Africa infrastructure cooperation enjoyed rapid development. In January-November 2016, the contractual value of contracted projects newly signed by Chinese enterprises in Africa reached US$65.2 billion, with an increase of 7.2% year on year. Africa continued to be the second largest market of China’s contracted projects in other countries. At the same time, four out of ten countries with which China newly signed the largest contract value were from Africa, namely Egypt, Angola, Alegria and Ethiopia. Nine out of twenty projects newly signed by China with the largest contract value were in Africa. Among these, the project of the new capital construction of Egypt and the project of coal-fired power plant of Egypt marked the second largest one and the third, with a contract value of US$2.7 billion and US$2.64 billion. The integrated camp building cooperation between Chinese enterprises with Africa had achieved initial success, Ethiopia-Djibouti railway officially opened transport service, the underline engineering of Kenya Mombasa-Nairobi railway project had been completed basically. These projects not only provided a strong demonstration effect to the transformation and upgrading of China-Africa infrastructure cooperation, but also helped the economic integrated development of Africa and exerted a continuous overflow effect on the regional development and the development of the economic belt along the line.

China-Africa regional aviation cooperation made new breakthrough. In 2016, MOFCOM played a leading role in solidly promoting “China-Africa regional aviation cooperation plan” announced by Premier Li Keqiang during his visit in Africa in 2014, making market preparation for the export of domestic civil aircraft to Africa with new breakthrough. MOFCOM, together with its counterparts of Egypt, Mauritius, The Republic of Guinea, Nigeria, Mozambique and the African Union Commission respectively sign MOU of aviation cooperation, trained more than 100 aviation talents for Africa. At the same time, MOFCOM guided China Aviation Enterprise and operation enterprises to strengthen market development dynamics, held activities such as China-Africa regional aviation cooperation forum in Zhuhai Airplane Exhibition, continued to enhance and improve the construction work of African civil aircraft marketing, customer service and maintenance system and profoundly discussed the export of civil aircraft and how to establish a joint venture airline with relevant countries.

2017 marks an important year of the implementation of the “13th Five-Year” plan, as well as a year of deepened structure reform of supply side. MOFCOM will continue to focus on implementing the main line of new trade and economic measures of the China-Africa “Ten Cooperation Plans”, comprehensively carry out and implement the working spirits of the sixth plenary session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Economic Working Conference, plan and promote all kinds of work for China-Africa trade and economic cooperation, overcome difficulties, seize opportunities, blaze new trails in a pioneering spirit, constantly open up new pattern for our trade and economic cooperation with Africa and embrace the successful convening of the 19th NPC of the Chinese Communist Party with splendid work.


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