Two Bulgarian companies and their Chinese counterparts in Sofia on June 3 signed agreements of intent to export local agriculture products involving millions of U.S. dollars.

The Kabakum Group Import Export and China Sinopharm International Corporation decided to export Bulgarian sunflower oil amounting to 1.5 million euros ($1.95 million), while Vinprom Peshtera SA agreed with Sinochem Plastics Co. Ltd. to sell 500,000 euros worth of wine products to China.

With the help of institutions from the two sides, various Bulgarian food products, mainly including corn and alfalfa, meat, fish, milk and dairy products, have been exported to China, said Diyana Naydenova, Director of Foreign Economic Policy at the Bulgarian Ministry of Economy and Energy.

Bilateral trade turnover between China and Bulgaria in 2012 reached $1.895 billion, 29.4 percent more than the previous year, according to official data.

Joining TPP

China will study the possibility of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a Ministry of Commerce spokesman said on May 30.

"We will analyze the advantages, disadvantages and the possibility of joining the TPP, based on careful research and according to the principles of equality and mutual benefit," said the ministry's spokesman Shen Danyang.

He made the remarks at a news briefing in response to a question about China's stance in joining the TPP, which is a proposed free trade agreement under negotiation by 12 nations, ranging from the United States and Japan to Mexico, Australia and Viet Nam.

"China also hopes to exchange information and materials with TPP members on the negotiations," said the spokesman. He said that regional economic diversification should be considered in building the free trade zone, and openness, inclusiveness and transparency should be advocated.

More Accurate Data

China will start a pilot reform of data collection relating to fixed asset investment in 2013, so as to make local economic statistics more reliable, China Business News reported.

Statistics showed that the average annual growth rate of fixed asset investment from 2003 to 2011 stood at 21.7 percent, 11 percentage points higher than that of the gross domestic product (GDP).

In 2011, the country's fixed asset investment totaled 31 trillion yuan ($5.02 trillion), hitting 65.9 percent of the GDP, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Shen Minggao, Citibank's chief economist for Greater China, queried whether the surging fixed asset investment figures were overstated based on the low investment efficiency.

The data's credibility is also in doubt because of the notable gap between the quantity of construction work regarding the fixed assets and the gross product of the country's construction industry.

In 2011, the work quantity was valued at 19.36 trillion yuan ($3.12 trillion) while the construction industry realized an output of just 11.71 trillion yuan ($1.89 trillion), the NBS said.