THE governor of the top-performing Chinese province in the last 20 years, Guangdong, said his province plans to increase imports from the Philippines of mechanical products and minerals to support its continued industrialization.

Gov. Huang Huahua, now in Manila as head of a business mission, said that in exchange, the Philippines should buy more products from his province.

He proposed the Philippines and Guangdong expand levels of cooperation to “catch the growth opportunities generated from the postfinancial-crisis era.”

One way of doing this is to strengthen cooperation in bilateral trade. “We will actively encourage the increase in import from the Philippines for mechanical products and minerals. Meanwhile, we hope imports from the Philippines of our textile, equipment, household appliances and construction materials will be increased, as well,” Huang said in his address at the luncheon for the Guangdong delegation at the Sofitel Hotel in Pasay City on Thursday.

He said the abundant mineral resources of the country such as copper, nickel, chrome, and gold are important in accelerating Guangdong’s development. In 2008, Guangdong’s GDP remained the highest in China with over $500 billion.

Trade between the Philippines and Guangdong amounted to $8.48 billion last year, about 30 percent of the trade volume between the Philippines and China; but this seems to be decreasing since, in the January-September period, exchange reached only about half or $4.29 billion of last year.

Guangdong, Huang said, will also buy from the Philippines more tropical agricultural products, which are popular among the province’s 94 million people.

“The economies of the Philippines and Guangdong are highly complementary to each other. At the same time, both are important links for multinational companies in their manufacturing outlay in Southeast Asia. We have close trade interconnection both within industries and companies. There are great potentials for us to tap in areas of 2-way investment, cooperative resources exploration, and engineering project contracting,” he said.