SANTIAGO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- China is a "fundamental" partner for Chile, especially as a market for Chilean wines, according to Mario Pablo Silva, president of trade promotion group Wines of Chile.
In 2017, China became the top export destination for Chile's wines, known for their quality and variety, as shown at the recent Santiago Wine Harvest Festival.
The April 13 to 14 event drew the country's top 35 wineries to Chile's capital Santiago, offering wine aficionados a chance to learn more about their favorite vintages.
Both organizers and participating wineries agreed on China's "fundamental" role for the country's wine sector.
In 2018, the South American country exported 55.3 million cases of wine, with some 8.1 million cases worth some 254 million U.S. dollars to China.
The numbers, said Silva, show China's fondness for Chilean wine, especially Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere, a deep purple grape variety from France's Bordeaux region that has flourished in Chile.
Angelica Valenzuela, marketing manager at Wines of Chile, said the free trade agreement between China and Chile, in effect since 2006 and updated in March, helped boost wine exports to the Asian giant by between 30 percent and 50 percent a year.
"In 2017 China became Chile's leading destination market, representing some 16 percent of sales, with extremely high growth potential, given the low per capita consumption rate there in China," said Valenzuela.
Clara Cortes, a representative of Siegel, a family-owned winery specializing in premium wines, noted her company's shipments to China grew 16 percent last year.
Siegel is Chile's third-largest exporter to China, and expects its shipments to the Asian country to grow between 18 percent and 20 percent in 2019.
"They are just beginning to grow and are very interested in everything that has to do with learning. They began with varietals (wines made of one grape variety), but we have clients requesting quality vintages," said Cortes.
Silva said he takes pride in knowing that Chilean wine is the national product with the "the strongest entry into China with the Chile brand on its label."
Besides the wine industry, he is also proud to "see that the Chinese in general have a very good opinion of Chile," Silva told Xinhua, adding "there are very good people-to-people ties."
HAVANA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The national flags of Cuba and China fly side by side atop a 60-meter-high oil derrick along the coast of the Caribbean island, a symbol of their bilateral cooperation in offshore oil exploration.
Some 160 seasoned employees of China's Great Wall Drilling Company, an affiliate of China National Petroleum Corporation, are working on the island as part of a joint venture with state-owned oil firm Cuba Petroleum Company (CUPET).
"Our deposits extend out to sea, so increasingly, wells are longer and to reach them we need cutting-edge technology that we have accessed through the Great Wall Company," Julio Jimenez, CUPET's director of drilling, told Xinhua.
Great Wall Drilling, which began operating in Cuba in 2005, has been commissioned to drill most of Cuba's oil wells, using high-tech equipment capable of accessing shallow offshore oil deposits from land.
Located very close to the coastal town of Boca de Camarioca, about 120 km east of Havana, a 1,475-meter-deep well extends 4,692 meters out to sea after gradually modifying its trajectory to an angle of 89 degrees. Workers aim to reach 6,950 meters, where geological studies show a hydrocarbon deposit is located.
The company uses four drilling rigs of two different types in Cuba. Safer and faster oil-based mud drilling is used as it cools and lubricates the drill bits.
Meng Fanji, 42, is the company's deputy manager and superintendent of Health, Safety and Environment. Born in central China's Henan Province, he has been working in Cuba for nine years.
"We have increased the efficiency of drilling, lowered the cost of building the wells, and drilled several highly productive wells, in addition, we have supported the finding of new deposits," said Meng.
The Chinese company is now working on another exploration well in Celimar, about 15 km east of Havana. This well is 2,141 meters deep and, after reaching an angle of 79 degrees, runs for 5,100 meters out to sea. The objective is to reach a crude deposit estimated to lie 6,300 meters offshore.
According to Cuban engineer Elber Smith, who heads operations at three wells along Havana's north coast, Chinese cooperation has been "fundamental to the success of this effort."
Cuba's local crude output meets about half the island's energy needs, while the remainder is purchased abroad, mainly from Venezuela at preferential prices.
In addition to its own oil exploration, Cuba also opened 59 blocks of its 112,000-square-km exclusive economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico to foreign investment two decades ago.
ISLAMABAD, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's trade deficit with China decreased by 11.93 percent during last eight months from July 2018 to February 2019, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said Wednesday.
According to a statement from the SBP, the trade deficit decreased to 5.48 billion U.S. dollars during the first eight months of Pakistan's ongoing fiscal year ranging from July 2018 to June 2019 as compared to the trade deficit of 6.22 billion U.S. dollars in the same period of the preceding year.
The trade gap declined due to two reasons, including an increase in Pakistani exports to China and a drop in its imports from China, the SBP data showed.
The exports from Pakistan to China during the period under review increased by 3.8 percent to 1.15 billion U.S. dollars as compared to the exports of 1.106 billion U.S. dollars recorded from July 2017 to February 2018.
Similarly, Pakistan's imports from China also dropped by 9.43 percent to 6.63 billion U.S dollars in the reporting period from 7.32 billion U.S. dollars in the same period of last year.
On the year-on-year basis, Pakistan's imports from China went down to 686.1 million U.S. dollars in February 2019 against the imports worth of 780.6 million U.S. dollars recorded during the same month of last year.
Pakistan's incumbent government led by Prime Minister Imran Khan last year expressed a desire to boost the country's overall annual exports to 27 billion U.S. dollars from the existing 23.4 billion dollars in the ongoing fiscal year to end on June 30, 2019.
During a visit to Pakistan in September 2018, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi responded to Pakistani government's desire and announced to increase its imports from the South Asian country.
Local watchers said that the current drop in the trade deficit was mainly achieved due to the Chinese government's efforts to increase its imports from Pakistan.
