Ukraine's trade with China reached $8.8 bln last year — Kubiv

Ukraine's First Vice Prime Minister - Economic Development and Trade Minister Stepan Kubiv stated this on Friday, the press service of the Economic Development Ministry reported.

“China is a strategic partner of Ukraine, and mutual trade is constantly growing. For 11 months of 2018, Ukraine’s trade with China amounted to $8.82 billion, which is $1.1 billion more than in 2017. Ukraine and China have recently agreed at the highest level that the trade turnover between Ukraine and China will reach $10 billion a year. We are pleased to note that our work in this direction demonstrates obvious progress,” Kubiv said.

He also added that such volume of trade between Ukraine and China was confirmed by the Intergovernmental Commission on Cooperation during a visit of Vice President of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Ma Kai to Ukraine in 2017 and during a meeting with Vice President of the State Council of China Liu He in April 2018. Stepan Kubiv also thanked for the invitation from Chinese colleagues to visit the Ukrainian-Chinese Strategic Partnership Forum "One Belt, One Road" to be held in Beijing in April 2019.

“We have effective tools to strengthen our cooperation in order to significantly deepen cooperation in key promising sectors. First of all, we speak about the Ukrainian-Chinese Intergovernmental Commission, as well as joint participation of the representatives of Ukraine and China in such events as the One Belt, One Road Forum, which is a good platform for interstate dialogue between our countries,” Kubiv said.

As reported, the trade turnover between Ukraine and China amounted to $7.69 billion in 2017 and increased by 17.9% compared to 2016.