China's Silk Road Fund has helped establish a diversified and sustainable system that provides strong financial support for the development of countries joining Belt and Road cooperation, an official from the country's top economic planner said on Tuesday.

Established in Beijing on December 29, 2014, the Silk Road Fund Co., Ltd. operates with capital contributed by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China Investment Corporation, Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank. The Fund serves the Belt and Road Initiative by providing investment and financing support to promote shared development and prosperity of the BRI community.

"We gave play to the roles of relevant policy-based financial institutions, encouraged the Silk Road Fund to steadily expand its investment in the BRI partner countries, and have basically established a diversified, stable and sustainable investment and financing system, providing strong financial support for the development of BRI partner countries," said Jin Xiandong, director of the Office of Policy Studies under the National Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference.

By the end of 2022, the Silk Road Fund had committed over 20 billion U.S. dollars to investments covering more than 60 countries and regions.

By the end of June this year, China had signed more than 200 Belt and Road cooperation documents with 152 countries and 32 international organizations.

China's trade in goods with countries along the Belt and Road jumped 9.8 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2023, 7.7 percentage points higher than the country's overall trade growth during the same period, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs.

In the first five months, China's non-financial direct investment to countries along the Belt and Road rose by 19.6 percent.

The number of China-Europe freight train services increased by 16 percent year on year to 8,641 trips during the January-June period, according to the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. Some 936,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) of goods were transported via freight trains, up 30 percent.