A new review is suggesting the Chinese government's "Belt and Road" initiative has madeprogress over the past year.

Stats from countries officially involved in the Chinese program show the total volume ofbilateral trade those countries and China hit 995 billion U.S. dollars last year.

That makes up around one-quarter of all of China's overall trade volume.

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Shen Danyang.

"We have established more than 50 overseas trade cooperation zones with respectivecountries. The China-Belarus Industrial Zone, Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone andChina-Indonesia Comprehensive Industrial Zone in particular have attained considerableand effective progress and become important media for Chinese companies to go out asgroups and promote international capacity and equipment manufacturing cooperation withrelevant countries."

The same review also shows Chinese companies have invested over 2 billion US dollars in"Belt and Road" countries last year, an over 40-percent increase year on year.

At the same time, around one-billion US dollars’ worth of investment from those countrieshas flowed into China through last year, up over 5-percent.

With the "Belt and Road" initiative making strides over this pear year, a leading Chinesecredit rating agency is looking to help companies make better investment decisions when itcomes to infrastructure.

Dagong International has established a global infrastructure credit rating system to asseswhich countries are more risky than others when it comes to investment in infrastructure.

The move is part of a global push by world leaders to establish a stronger credit ratingsystem around the world.

To that end, CRI's Liu Kun spoke with former French Prime Minister Dominique deVillepin, who is among a group trying to push forward credit rating developmentworldwide.

(CRIENGLISH.com April 7, 2016)