China welcome to invest in Brazil

Brazil welcomes Chinese investment in its areas of great strategic significance, especially infrastructure construction and energy development, Marco Maia, president of the Chamber of Deputies, National Congress of Brazil, said on June 8 in Beijing.

"Brazil plans to increase investment in infrastructure construction, energy and technology in the coming few years, and China is an excellent companion in the development of such areas," he said, mentioning that he visited some big high-tech projects in Shanghai and Beijing and found areas where the two countries could cooperate.

At the invitation of Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, Marco Maia paid an official visit from June 2 to June 9 to China to launch the regular exchange mechanism between the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the NPC.

Maia said he hoped that the two legislative bodies could promote economic cooperation through more exchange contacts.

Brazil is vigorously developing the energy sector to fuel economic growth, and will invest $250 billion in the coming few years on more offshore drilling platforms, oil refineries and tankers, he said.

Because the 2016 Summer Olympic Games will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Maia pointed out that Brazil is soon to launch a high-speed rail between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and franchise rights on new airports across the country are calling for bids from foreign capital.

"We welcome all foreign investments, especially from China, which replaced the United States in 2009 as Brazil's biggest trade partner," he said.

Bilateral trade between China and Brazil has been growing by nearly 35 percent on an annual basis and reached $77 billion last year.

"Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told me yesterday that the trade volume is expected to exceed $100 billion this year, and I think we should maintain a yearly growth rate of 20 to 25 percent in the future," he said.

"In the past few years, our economic and trade relations have witnessed a rapid development in the scale and level of pragmatic cooperation. Brazil and China are not competitors. We have strong complementarities which are beneficial to our future development."

Maia also said it is "natural" to have some trade frictions in the rapid development of economic and trade relations, and Brazil and China should both take a correct attitude towards them.

In addition, Maia said that China's growing national consumption provides tremendous opportunities for Brazilian companies to invest in China.

Brazil's legislative body will work to simplify and improve the industrial and tax laws to attract more foreign investors and engineers and provide legal protection for them, Maia said, "Our goal is to resolve the legal bottlenecks in the bilateral economic ties and promote bilateral trade cooperation."