MOSCOW, March 28 - Chinese and Russian enterprises signed 21 agreements and contracts worth 4.3 billion U.S. dollars after the opening ceremony of China's national exhibition here Tuesday.

 

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and Russian Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref took part in the signing ceremony.

 

Among those agreements and contracts, 17 trade deals valued at about 3.7 billion dollars were signed. These include exports of Chinese cars, home appliances and farm products to Russia, as well as imports of Russian machine tools and silicic steel plates to China. Four economic cooperation projects worth 586 million dollars in timber processing, shipbuilding and mining were also inked.

 

Double-digit growth has been registered in two-way trade for the past eight years. Trade volume hit a record 33.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, up 15 percent from the previous year, according to Chinese Commerce Ministry figures.

 

The two countries have decided to raise the volume of bilateral trade to 60-80 billion dollars by 2010, and the investment of China in Russia to 12 billion dollars by 2020.