China and Bangladesh should make further effort to boost their economic cooperation in energy, farm produce, machinery and electronic products, textiles, food processing, fishery and infrastructure construction.

Wan Jifei, chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), made the call Friday in Beijing at the Sino-Bangladesh Business Opportunities Seminar, which was attended by visiting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

In 2004, the Sino-Bangladesh bilateral trade volume reached 1.96 billion US dollars and, in the first half of this year, the volume rose 27 percent year on year to 1.14 billion US dollars, Wan said.

By June 2005 the contracted mutual investment between the two countries hit 94 million US dollars, and China's contract volume for project construction and labor services in Bangladesh reached 3.24 billion US dollars, according to the CCPIT.

Although bilateral economic and trade cooperation has been growing rapidly, problems, such as China's excessive trade surplus against Bangladesh, still exist, Wan said, expressing the hope that the two countries would further cooperation in the fields with a huge potential so as to alleviate the trade imbalance.

China imports mainly leather products, cotton-made textile products and sea food from Bangladesh, while exporting textiles, machinery and electronical products as well as cement, fertilizers, tyres and corn to it.

Source: Xinhua