As a part of the conference, Minister U.Enkhtuvshin met with First Secretary of the Central Secretariat of the China’s Communist Party Wang Huning to discuss some aspects of mutual cooperation and current challenging issues of cooperation between the two countries.

U.Enktuvshin pointed out that the government of Mongolia is ready to closely cooperate with Chinese authorities to make next year’s meeting of the council of mineral resources, energy and infrastructure cooperation between the two countries mutually beneficial and to implement projects that will have significant impact on the two nations’ economic development.

The Deputy Prime Minister asked Huning to focus on accelerating projects that will be implemented with Chinese non-refundable aid and soft loans, as well as on arranging a meeting on the non-refundable aid of two billion CNY that China’s President Xi Jinping offered during his visit to Mongolia in 2014. The Mongolian side is keen to start negotiating about making amendments to an intergovernmental agreement on border checkpoints and their procedures signed by the two governments in 2004, and addressing the border issues regarding the slow passage of trucks carrying coal from Mongolia to China.

Huning stated that as China has outlined to carry out open relations and cooperation with the world’s countries, especially with neighbor countries under the country’s strategic plan created by China’s Communist Party during its 19th national congress, held from October 18 to 24, there will be new collaboration opportunities between the two countries.

The Chinese official stated that he hopes that the two nations will develop mutually beneficial economic cooperation, as well as humanitarian cooperation. He added that the two governments should work together to increase the current trade turnover of 4.6 billion USD between the two countries to 10 billion USD by 2020, but noted that it will depend on the global market.

He stressed, “When implementing projects and programs between the two countries, China abides by the statement by Xi Jinping that China will respect Mongolia’s stance and interests, but the two countries face challenges of cooperation due to some misunderstandings between our two nations.”

Huning said that state authorities in charge of border, customs, mining, export and import will work to address challenging issues between the two countries, and this matter will be discussed during the next meeting of China-Mongolia intergovernmental commission.