China and Singapore on Saturday signed a pact to launch their third government-to-government project, in the southwestern Chinese metropolis of Chongqing. The project will focus on financial services, aviation, transport and logistics, and information and communications technology, Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement.
The agreement was signed during the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Singapore to mark 25 years of formal diplomatic relations between the countries. It was Xi's first visit to the island-state as president. Singapore is the second-largest source of foreign direct investment to China after Hong Kong, while China is the top destination of Singapore's direct investment abroad.
Since the 1990s, Singapore and China have invested in two government-to-government projects - the Suzhou Industrial Park near Shanghai and Tianjin Eco-City in the country's northeast. The flagship Suzhou Industrial Park was launched in 1994 and was regarded in China as a model of modern manufacturing based on industrial estates in Singapore. China and Singapore also agreed to launch negotiations on the upgrade of the countries' free trade agreement and conclude talks by 2016. A free trade agreement between them took effect in 2009. Their total trade rose 60 percent to S$121 billion ($85 billion) last year from S$75.7 billion in 2009. China has been Singapore's biggest trade partner since 2013.