Vietnam and China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region will promote their economic cooperation, especially in the fields of trade, transports, tourism, industry and agriculture.

At a high-level conference on economic and commercial cooperation between Guangxi and Vietnamese northern localities held on Thursday, delegates agreed that the two sides should make use of the China-ASEAN trade fair, which will be held in Guangxi's capital city Nanning on Oct. 19-22 to expand their trade cooperation.

The localities should also frequently organize trade fairs, exhibitions, more exchange information, and take full advantages of border trade to increase bilateral trade, improve living standards of people in the two countries' border areas, they added.

Regarding transports, the two sides need to cooperate in upgrading road and railway systems in border areas, accelerating construction of seaports, opening new border gates and improving some old ones into international ones, meeting increasing demand for trade and tourism exchange of the two countries' people, the participants said.

To tourism, the two sides should beef up cooperation in exploiting border and transnational tourism projects, exchanging information, and enhancing tourism promotion, the delegates stated. They also urged the two countries' governments to issue preferential policies on tourism development between Guangxi and Vietnam's northern localities.

Together with trade, transport and tourism, the participants also asked the two sides to expand cooperation in industry, agriculture and aquaculture, especially in the fields of energy, minerals, fertilizer, seafood and animal feed. Guangxi and Vietnam should support together in exploiting and processing iron ores, manganese, aluminum, and building metallurgy factories and power plants.

Besides, the two sides should cooperate in environment protection, and culture, education and sports exchange, they added.

To well implement the above-mentioned issues, Guangxi and Vietnam need to build an effectiveness cooperation mechanism, the delegates added, noting that leaders of border localities should exchange working visits more frequently to quickly dealing with their economic issues.

After the conference, the two sides signed 23 projects, including 13 trade projects worth more than 49.8 million US dollars.

Before the conference, the delegates also gathered at a meeting on the 2nd China-ASEAN trade fair and Guangxi-ASEAN cooperation on Thursday morning, agreeing to make use of the fair to strengthen business cooperation between Vietnamese enterprises and Chinese counterparts in Guangxi.

China and Vietnam posted two-way trade of 6.74 billion US dollars in 2004, up 45.3 percent against 2003. Of the turnovers, two-way trade between Guangxi and Vietnam reached 753 million dollars, posting a year-on-year increase of 13 percent.

Source: Xinhua