An Egyptian company has manufactured 80 Chinese-designed K-8E aircraft in the past five years, successfully completing the first Sino-Egyptian contract on joint aircraft-manufacturing, company officials said on Sunday.

"As the 80th K-8E aircraft is being delivered to the Egyptian Air Forces, today we are celebrating a milestone in joint Sino- Egyptian cooperation in aircraft-manufacturing," said Ibrahim Yunis, chairman of the AOI/ACL aircraft-manufacturing company.

AOI/ACL began to assembly Chinese-designed K-8E aircraft in July 2000 and now it has been authorized to produce as much as 97. 4 percent of the components of the aircraft.

Wu Shengyue, vice-Chairman of the China National Aero- Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC), expressed optimism over the future cooperation between the two sides.

"Today we are not only witnessing the successful completion of the first Sino-Egyptian contract on joint aircraft-manufacturing, we are also celebrating the beginning of the second contract under which another 40 K-8E aircraft will be manufactured in Egypt before February 2010," Wu said.

He added that CATIC and AOI/ACL will work harder in the future to export K-8E aircraft to other Arab countries and the African market.

K-8E is an Egyptian version of the K-8 series, which is jointly developed by Chinese and Pakistani engineers.

K-8, which stands for Karakoram-8, is a two-seat advanced training jet and light air-to-ground attack aircraft.

Egyptian Air Forces has been the largest receiver of the K-8 trainers since CATIC signed a contract of 347.4 million US dollars in 1999 with the Egyptian Defense Department to export 80 K-8E aircraft.

Source: Xinhua