Following 21 rounds of negotiations over 10 years, the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement was officially signed on June 17, 2015. It enjoys one of the highest degrees of liberalization amongst all the FTAs China has so far signed with another economy. As Australia becomes an emerging strategic market for Chinese overseas investment, the China-Australia FTA will help lower bilateral restrictions on trade and investment, expanding cooperation between Chinese and Australian companies from such sectors as electric power, transportation, energy, telecommunication, resources, and logistics to environment, agriculture, tourism and other industries. This will enable enterprises of both countries to tap their respective advantages and forge highly complementary relationships, thus spurring bilateral cooperative projects in infrastructure investment to be implemented in Australia in a faster, better way.
The 7th International Infrastructure Investment and Construction Forum was held on June 2nd ,2016, which had been attended by 46 distinguished ministerial guests from 36 countries, and more than 1400 representatives from over 600 international institutions, contractors, consulting companies of the international infrastructure investment and construction field.
As the moderator, Adam Joseph Worthington, Managing Director of Infrastructure Asia for Macquarie Capital attended Parallel Panel 3: Bilateral Infrastructure Cooperation under China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, where he stated that the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement had provided numerous opportunities for infrastructure development and investment banks. By way of the realization of diversified financing measures, the bilateral cooperation shared a bright future.