国内英语新闻:China is Ireland's largest trade partner in Asia: CSO

DUBLIN, March 16 (Xinhua) -- China is the largest trade partner of Ireland in Asia, revealed statistics released here on Friday.

According to the statistics released by the Irish national statistics bureau CSO, the bilateral goods trade between China and Ireland totalled 774.8 million euros (952.2 million U.S. dollars) in the first month of this year.

The figure represents 283.8 million euros more than that of Japan, Ireland's second largest trader partner in Asia in the month, revealed the CSO statistics.

CSO said in its monthly imports and exports report that China was Ireland's second largest non-EU source of imports only next to the United States in January.

Last year, the bilateral goods trade between China and Ireland set a record high of 11.05 billion U.S. dollars, a sharp increase of 37 percent over the previous year, according to the Chinese official statistics.