An alliance of 35 Russian and Chinese financial institutions was established on Thursday in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, to better serve cross-border financial activities.
The China-Russia Financial Council, initiated by Harbin Bank, a private commercial bank, and Sberbank of Russia, the largest bank in the country, will promote cross-border trade, said Sun Yao, vice governor of Heilongjiang Province, at the inaugural ceremony for the organization.
Consisting of 17 Russian financial institutions and 18 Chinese counterparts, ranging from privately-owned commercial banks and insurance companies, the Council offers participants a platform for communication, discussion and information exchange. It will improve the local currency settlement mechanism, support credit business and capital raising and promote new industries such as cross-border e-commerce, said Sergei Tsyplakov, chief representative of Sberbank of Russia.
Heilongjiang shares a 3,000-km border with Russia. China remained Russia's largest trade partner for the fifth year in 2014, while Russia is China's ninth-largest trade partner.
Bilateral trade rose 6.8 percent from the previous year to a record high of 95.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2014. Twenty years ago, it was less than 7 billion dollars.
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