China has now become the main destination for Chilean farm products, with fruit, wine and salmon among the main items of Chilean agricultural exports to China, data from the Agriculture Ministry and other government agencies show.
In 2014, the commercial exchanges between the two sides topped 34 billion U.S. dollars. China is now the third-largest market for Chilean foodstuffs, after the U.S. and Japan.
The free-trade agreement between Chile and China, signed in 2005, has facilitated exports to China. Chile has sold agricultural and fresh products with a value of 78.4 million U.S. dollars in 2003, and the number rocketed to 1.273 billion U.S. dollars in 2014.
Now, 11 percent of all Chilean fruit exports goes to China, along with 17 percent of processed foods, 4 percent of wine and 3 percent of salmon. China is now the third-largest market for Chilean fruit, the fifth for wine and the sixth for salmon.
A total of 646 Chilean companies were doing business with China in 2015, including 274 small and medium-sized enterprises, which employ a large portion of the Chilean work force.
