The Foreign Ministry’s Secretary General for International Economic Relations, Panagiotis Mihalos, met today with the President of the state shipbuilding group of the Chinese Province of Fujian, Mr. Zhao Jinjie. The discussion focused mainly on expansion of bilateral economic and business cooperation.
Mr. Jinjie stressed that his company wants to explore the potential for cooperation with Greek shipyards, as well as with Greek shipping equipment companies. He referred to his cooperation with our country’s shipping companies, noting the high demand, on the part of Chinese groups, for specialized personnel with the necessary expertise in the shipbuilding and wider shipping sector.
Mr. Mihalos stressed that the Greek professionals of the sector are internationally recognized and agreed that one of the areas where there are considerable prospects for cooperation between Greece and China is shipbuilding. As he noted, Greek ship owners are the most important clients of the Chinese shipyards, with over 200 Greek-interest vessels currently under construction in China.
Given this cooperation, Mr. Mihalos referred to two additional proposed ways to promote bilateral cooperation. First, the utilization of the financing offered by Chinese financial institutions to Greek ship owners for work carried out not just in China, but also at Greek shipyards. Additionally, he referred to the Greek side’s proposal to add to the existing institutional framework a specialized Memorandum of Cooperation regarding Chinese shipyards and Greek suppliers of shipping equipment.
August 21, 2014