China and Kazakhstan agreed on Friday in a joint communique to set maintaining sustained growth of bilateral trade volume and promoting implementation of key cooperation programs as priorities of bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

To this end, the two countries decided to improve investment environment, work out new cooperation mode, optimize trade structure and strengthen economic and technological cooperation to facilitate companies of both countries, said the communique, which was issued during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to the Central Asian country.

They also agreed to take feasible measures to protect the legitimate rights of their citizens and corporations on each other's territories.

Both sides have decided to continue enhancing cooperation in the fields of petrochemicals, metallurgy and construction materials, machine building, textile, food processing, agriculture, telecommunications, transportation and logistics, said the joint communique.

They stressed that they will continue to further energy cooperation and ensure the completion of a natural gas pipeline linking the two countries by the end of 2009.

In face of the current global financial turmoil, both sides agreed on the great importance of closer financial cooperation and joint efforts in financial supervision, exchange of experience and sharing of information.

The communique said both China and Kazakhstan have given high priority to agriculture cooperation and agreed to speed up the implementation of a package of cooperation programs in this area.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2008)