The Australian Trade and Investment Commission and Sichuan Provincial Department of Commerce co-convened the Seminar on Australia-China Trade and Investment and CIIE on October 16 here in Chengdu, which is the first as well as the only pre-CIIE (China International Import Expo) event in western China with the Australian government as a major organizer.

The seminar is hoped to introduce the Australian companies to attend the coming CIIE in Shanghai to their Sichuan counterparts and investors, and to deepen their mutual understanding and explore potentials for mutual cooperation.

Sichuan and Australia have been keeping close economic and trade exchanges for years. In 2017, the volume of import and export between the two sides totaled US$1.29 billion, rising by 68% over a year ago. Of the amount, Sichuan's export to Australia increased by 23%, and its import from the country jumped by 202% year-on-year. In the first half of this year, the province's import from the country in the southern hemisphere hit US$420 million, a year-on-year growth of 100.4%.

Sichuan and Australia have a wide-ranging partnership in a variety of fields. Both the ANZ Banking Group's operation & management center in Chengdu and Goodman Group's logistics center in the city evidently show Australian companies' diversified development strategies in Sichuan and strong belief in the western China market. An Australian official involved in the seminar expressed that now it is the "golden age" for the Sichuan-Australian cooperation, thanks to Chengdu's large number of institutions of higher learning, abundant talent resources, reasonable operating costs for businesses, as well as business-friendly environment.