BEIJING - China has become the second largest trading partner of Latin America, while Latin America is ranked the second for Chinese overseas investment, following Asia, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Thursday.

"In recent years, economic and trade cooperation between China, Latin America and Caribbean countries has been expanding extensively, with larger scale and wider scope, achieving great yields in trade, investment and project contracting," MOC spokesperson Gao Feng said at a press conference. "China's trade with Latin America and Caribbean countries went up 20 percent year-on-year in the first nine months, reaching $228.6 billion."

In 2017, trade volume between the two sides was $257.8 billion, up 18.8 percent year-on-year, MOC data showed.

Last year, Chinese enterprises invested $387 billion in Latin America, and the contracts signed were worth $164.2 billion. Turnover from completion of projects contracting was $112.9 billion.

"China and Latin America are highly complementary in economy, thus there's a large room for both sides to develop economic and trade cooperation," Gao said, adding that China was willing to work together with Latin American countries and bring the bilateral trade and economic cooperation to a higher level through the Belt and Road Initiative.