Laos and China will jointly build a bridge linking the Southeast Asian nation with northeastern Thailand as part of a USD 7.2 billion high-speed railway project that has been delayed by numerous setbacks for more than four years, a Lao government official said.
Officials from both sides agreed to construct the bridge over the Mekong River to link Laos with Thailand’s Nong Khai province during a meeting in which they resolved to build the much-delayed rail line from Kunming in south China’s Yunnan province to the Lao capital Vientiane, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport told RFA’s Lao Service.
Landlocked Laos expects the railway’s 420-kilometer (261-mile) route through the country to lower the cost of exports and consumer goods while boosting socioeconomic development in the impoverished nation of nearly 7 million people. It is part of a longer railway that will extend southward through the Malay peninsula to Singapore.
Laos will pay 40 percent, or USD 840 million, of the initial construction costs, while China will pay 60 percent, or USD 1.26 billion, a report said. Chinese venture capital firms would contribute the remaining USD 5.1 billion, and receive substantial stakes in the railway once it has been completed.
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