January 25, 2019, First Vice Prime Minister/Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Stepan Kubiv met with H.E. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China to Ukraine Mr. Du Wei.

During the meeting, the sides tackled the state and prospects of fulfilling the current tasks of strengthening trade and economic relations between Ukraine and China. First of all, the issues at stakes are those arrangements reached  during the bilateral meeting of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko with the  Vice President of the People's Republic of China Wang Qishan within the World Economic Forum in Davos.

 "China is a strategic partner for Ukraine, and mutual trade is constantly growing. In 11 months of 2018, Ukraine's trade with China totaled $ 8.82 billion, which is more than $ 1.1 billion than in 2017. Recently, Ukraine and China have agreed at the highest level that the trade turnover between the two countries will reach $ 10 billion a year. It is pleased to note that our work in this direction demonstrates obvious progress,"  Stepan Kubiv stated.

The First Vice Prime Minister emphasized that such volume of trade between Ukraine and China has been confirmed, in particular, during the Intergovernmental Commission on Cooperation in the framework of the visits of the Vice Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Ma Kai to Kyiv in December 2017 and Vice Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Liu He in April of  2018.  Stepan Kubiv also thanked Chinese colleagues for the invitation to visit the "One Belt, One Road" international cooperation forum to be held in April 2019 in Beijing.

"We have effective tools for strengthening cooperation in order to significantly deepen cooperation in key promising sectors. First of all, it is the Ukrainian-Chinese intergovernmental commission, as well as the joint participation of representatives of Ukraine and China in large-scale events such as the "One Belt, One Road" forum, which is an effective platform for establishing an interstate dialogue between our countries, "Stepan Kubiv stressed.

He underlined that the next meeting of the Ukrainian-Chinese Intergovernmental Commission on Cooperation will be held in 2019, as it will allow to significantly increase the number and effectiveness of joint mutually interesting and successful projects and accelerate the implementation of existing areas of cooperation.