BEIJING, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- 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 U.S. dollars."

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

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

"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.