The Vietnamese government has just approved an agreement between Vietnam and China on building a bridge over the Red River to allow for the transport of people and goods, local newspaper Youth reported Monday.

 

Construction of the bridge, linking he Vietnamese northern Lao Cai Province with Hekou county in China's Yunnan Province, is expected to start late this month and open to traffic in mid-2007. The building of the bridge will help with the development of two economic corridors and the Beibu Gulf economic belt involving many Chinese and Vietnamese localities.

 

The four-lane bridge, 21.5 meters wide and 295 meters in long, will also help promote tourism and trade exchanges between Vietnam's northwestern and China's southwestern regions.

 

In 2005, over 2.2 million tons of cargo and 1.4 million people went through the international border gate of Lao Cai-Hekou putting tremendous pressure on the two existing bridges, according to officials from the Lao Cai People's Committee.

 

Vietnam's import-export trade with China through the border gate has grown annually by 15 percent in recent years, according to the committee. The figure is expected to surpass US$1 billion in 2012.

 

Economic and trade relations between the two countries have earned encouraging results in recent years. China's statistics show the bilateral trade surged 21.6 percent to reach US$8.2 billion in 2005. Of the total China exported US$5.64 billion worth of goods and imported US$2.55 billion--up 32.5 percent and 2.8 percent respectively.

 

(Xinhua News Agency March 20, 2006)