India is one of China's neighboring countries, and the trade between the two countries has expanded rapidly with gradual expansion of exchange commodities and with continuous increase of businesspeople. As learned from the first China and South Asian Business Forum, the bilateral trade volume between the two Asian giants has topped 10 billion US dollars, up 80 per cent from last year.

According to the latest statistics from Chinese Customs, the total bilateral trade volume between the two countries has reached 12.16 billion US dollars in the first 11 months of this year, 82.7 per cent higher than that in the same period last year, among which the exports took up 5.23 billion US dollars, up 76.4 per cent, and the imports accounted for 8.74 billion US dollars, up 87.4 per cent.

The Indian officials and people from industrial and commercial circles attending the forum highly evaluated the economic and trade co-operations between China and India, expecting the growth rate of Sino-India trade will maintain higher records than that that of other South Asian countries. Former president of Indian Industrial Federation said that China has absolute advantages in areas of silk, manufacturing, construction and electronics industries and India will gain huge profits when cooperating with China in these fields.

The two governments of China and India signed trade agreement in 1951 and signed a new trade agreement in 1984. The Sino-Indian trade volume has kept sustainable growth since 1990s.

The statistics shows that the trade volume between China and India in 1990 only recorded 260 million US dollars and in 2002 that number climbed to 5 billion US dollars and in 2003 7.6 billion US dollars. It seems that the trade volume will top 13 billion US dollars according to the current sturdy growth. China mainly exports goods including raw silk, coke, medical appliances, light industrial and textile products, chemical products and electromechanical products to India, and mainly imports products involving iron ore, chrome, jewelry, steel, leather, vegetable oil, tropical medicine and chemical raw materials from India.

By People's Daily Online