| China-Iceland Free Trade Agreement Negotiation Formally Starts |
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Mr. Yu Guangzhou, Vice Minister of Commerce and Mrs. Valgerður Sverrisdóttir, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iceland jointly signed protocol on starting China-Iceland free trade agreement negotiation between Ministry of Commerce of China and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iceland in Beijing on Dec 4. According to the protocol, two nations should formally start FTA negotiations based on equal, mutual beneficial, cooperative and practical principle. Two nations agreed to hold the first session of negotiation in Beijing in the first quarter of 2007.
Iceland is the first developed country in Europe that negotiates FTA with China. In recent years, China-Iceland trade and economic relations favorably develops that goods trade increases fast, and cooperation on service and investment ever-increasingly deepens. To set up China-Iceland FTA brings benefit for the trade and economic cooperation, as well as for pushing improvement of economic development and people's living standard.
Before the signing ceremony, Mr. Yu met Mrs. Sverrisdóttir and her party. Mr. Yu expressed that China attached great importance to develop trade and economic relations with Iceland, and he highly appraised that Iceland took the leading place of recognizing China's market economy status. He said that China-Iceland bilateral trade closed to US$100 million in Jan-Oct 2006. Two countries had huge potential in cooperation on fishery, geothermal heat, contractual project, shipbuilding, aluminium industry and information communication. China-Iceland FTA should further solidify and strengthen existed friendly cooperative relations in future, expand trade, investment and cooperative scale of both sides, realize common development and prosperity, and build up a broad bridge for full cooperation between China and Iceland.
Mrs. Sverrisdóttir expressed that she was very glad that Iceland became to the first country around west Europe that recognized China's market economy status and started FTA negotiations with China. She appreciated China’s effort made for promoting development of China-Iceland trade and economic relations.
(Source: Network Center of MOFCOM)
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