China’s non-financial outbound direct investments in Latin America reached about $21.5 billion in 2015, an increase of 67 percent compared to 2014, said Yuan Xingyong, vicepresident of the Export-Import Bank of China (EximBank) at the seventh Latin America China Investors Forum held by LatinFinance magazine and China EximBank on Oct. 12 in Beijing.

Yuan said Latin America has become an important destination for Chinese investment, and it is attracting an ever-growing number of Chinese enterprises, so bilateral economic and trade relations are moving in the direction of mutually beneficial cooperation.

Hugo Sarmiento, CFO of the Development Bank of Latin America, said that cooperation between China and Latin America is strong and has a very promising future. China provides financing to Latin America, while the latter supplies raw materials and commodities. Many infrastructure projects have been jointly conducted by the two sides, like roads and railways, which are important for Latin America because they not only develop its infrastructure but also drive its exports to China.

He added that Latin America countries are importing a lot of goods from China now, and the growth in bilateral trade will remain high in the future.

Yue Yunxia, a research fellow from the Institute of Latin America Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said cooperation between China and Latin America has entered a new stage in which new vitality should be injected into the traditional complementary partnership from three aspects:

The innovation of mechanisms will eliminate bottlenecks in bilateral cooperation, Yue said. The cooperation model also needs to transition from being trade oriented to a comprehensive model that also includes investment and economy. In addition, innovation is needed in the driving forces of cooperation.

Yuan also offered three pieces of advice for promoting China-Latin America cooperation: further optimize the economic and trade cooperation model, extend the industrial cooperation chain and expand financial cooperation.