SEOUL, Oct 29 — Chinese planemaker Comac has opened an office in Singapore, China’s embassy in the South-east Asian city state said, as the state-owned company tries to break into a global passenger jet market dominated by Western manufacturers.

The new Asia-Pacific office was a key symbolic step for the passenger jet maker in taking its aircraft overseas, China’s ambassador to Singapore, Cao Zhongming, said at the inauguration.

"It’s hoped that Comac will make steady progress on the road of internationalisation,” he added, the embassy said in yesterday’s brief posting on social media site Weixin.

This year Comac has stepped up plans for production and sales of its C919 narrow-body passenger plane, which is in a category similar to Boeing’s 737 MAX and the A320neo planes of Airbus, although only flown within China.

Comac has been marketing its planes outside China. But industry sources say it is a long way from making inroads internationally, especially without benchmark certifications from the European Union, which it is pursuing for the C919, or the United States. — Reuters