China announced Friday that it has seen robust trade with the other BRICS nations in the first quarter as they jointly agreed to expand local currency settlement and inter-bank cooperation to increase trade and lending with each other.

BRICS, an acronym used to describe five of the world's major fast-growing economies, include Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa,

As the world's second largest economy, China's trade with other four BRICS nations surged by 45.8 percent to reach 59.9 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter of this year, the country's top customs authority said.

The first-quarter foreign trade growth between China and the other four nations of BRICS was 16.3 percentage points higher than China's average foreign trade growth during the period, China's General Administration of Customs said in a statement on its website.

During the first three months, China's imports from the other BRICS countries reached 33.05 billion U.S. dollars, up 57.2 percent year on year. Exports to those countries hit 26.85 billion yuan, up 33.8 percent.

China's Q1 trade deficit with the other four nations reached 6.2 billion U.S. dollars, up more than five times the amount from the same period last year.

In March alone, China's imports from these nations rose 48.8 percent to reach 11.93 billion U.S. dollars, while exports grew 48.5 percent to hit 9.93 billion U.S. dollars, creating 2 billion U.S. dollars in deficit.

During the first quarter, China's bilateral trade with each of the other four nations exceeded 10 billion U.S. dollars, with India and Brazil being China's 9th and 10th largest trading partner.

Q1 bilateral trade between China and India rose 25.2 percent to 17.63 billion U.S. dollars.

Trade with Brazil surged 58.9 percent to 16.11 billion U.S dollars, while that with Russia rose 33.5 percent to 15.99 billion U.S. dollars.

Bilateral trade between China and South Africa increased more than one fold to 10.16 billion U.S. dollars.

The statement said China's Beijing Municipality, Guangdong Province, and Jiangsu Province together made up about 40 percent of country's total foreign trade value with other BRICS nations in the first three months.

BRICS local currency settlement

As a concrete move to facilitate trade and lending, state development banks of the BRICS countries signed a framework agreement to expand local currency settlement and the scale of lending during the BRICS Leaders Meeting held Thursday in south China's seaside resort city of Sanya.