The ongoing Chinese National Exhibition in Moscow has turned out to be a massive boon to bilateral trade between China and Russia, especially in machinery and electrical products, officials said Thursday in Russia.

"To enlarge Sino-Russian trade in machinery and electrical products, the two sides should cooperate in priority areas such as electricity, nuclear energy, space, telecommunications, electronics, shipbuilding and automobiles," Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Yu Guangzhou said at the exhibition.

A key event of the "Year of China" in Russia, the March 26-29 exhibition has attracted many Chinese enterprises covering a wide range of fields like automobiles and fittings, machine manufacturing and home appliances.

The event was launched as visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this week reached common ground on improving the two countries' trade structure, especially in raising the imports of Russia's machinery and electrical products to China.

A Chinese purchasing group, consisting of 100 companies specializing in the fields of electrical equipment, electronic products, general machinery and engineering machinery, attended the exhibition.

Zhang Yujing, Executive Vice President of the China Chamber of Commerce of Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME), said in an interview with Xinhua that with a long history and solid foundations, Russia's manufacturing sector had a great deal of products suitable for the Chinese market.

According to Zhang, China's imports will reach 1 trillion U.S. dollars by 2010, a large market for the Russian products.

Chinese enterprises have signed four contracts worth about 509 million dollars to buy machinery and electrical products from their Russian counterparts during the fair. Another six contracts were signed to supply machinery and electrical products worth 1.128 billion dollars to Russia.

Official statistics showed that China-Russia bilateral trade turnover in machinery and electrical products stood at 5.85 billion dollars last year.

Although the sector experienced a 61-percent rise when compared to the previous year, it accounted for less than 20 percent of the whole bilateral trade volume.

Source: Xinhua