China, Germany sign procurement deals worth around 11 bln euros

Source: Xinhua | 02-26-2009 08:07

BERLIN, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese business delegation, led by Commerce Minister Chen Deming, signed here on Wednesday a total of 37 procurement deals worth around 11 billion euros (14 billion U.S. dollars) with German companies.

According to Chen, the 37 deals are composed of two parts -- purchasing contracts, and cooperation agreements which need further negotiations.

The deals focus on engineering equipment, electronics and auto vehicles like Mercedes and BMW, Chen told a press conference.

A draft deal obtained by Xinhua showed that the Chinese side agreed to buy around 37,000 BMW cars and Mini worth 2.2 billion U.S. dollars, as well as 27,000 units of Mercedes cars.

Chen revealed that apart from the current 200-member delegation, China would send more entrepreneurs to Germany to discuss further investment in both countries.

Germany is one of China's important trading partners within the European Union (EU). In 2008, the Sino-German trade hit 115 billion U.S. dollars. Despite the world economic crisis, China and Germany have vowed to maintain the trade volume unchanged this year.