Trade between China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) is growing faster than expected and should hit 200 billion U.S. dollars before the goal of 2012, ROK Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said in Beijing on Tuesday.

The two countries agreed in 2005 to raise bilateral trade to 200 billion U.S. dollars in 2012, said Han Duck-soo at a welcome ceremony by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).

He did not say when the volume would be achieved, but attributed the possible earlier realization of the trade goal to the fast development of economic and trade relations between the two countries.

"The Republic of Korea and China, close in history and contiguous in geography, have had a long history of mutual exchanges," he said.

Bilateral economic and trade relations would continue to expand as both the two countries insisted on mutual trust and benefit, he said.

The statistics from the CCPIT showed that the Sino-ROK trade volume in the first 10 months of this year reached 129.7 billion U.S. dollars, 19 percent higher than that of the same period in 2006.

By the end of October, China had received a total of 37.9 billion U.S. dollars of actual ROK investment and hosted almost 46,000 ROK-funded companies. By the end of September, China had invested 960 million U.S. dollars in the ROK.

(Xinhua News Agency December 12, 2007)