The giant dam of the Three Gorges hydropower project on the Yangtze River was near completion, the construction company in charge of the project said Thursday.

"There are 78,000 cubic meters of concrete left to be placed before the dam will finally complete in mid-May as scheduled," said Shi Huiliang, chief engineer of the Three Gorges Technology and Economy Development Corporation, also engineering supervisor of the dam.

For the benefits of flood control, power generation, navigation and migration, the construction of the dam was divided into two phases -- the right and the left banks.

Workers began in 1998 to build the dam from the north bank of Yangtze and finished the north part in October 2002.

The right bank began to be built in July 2003. Now the two parts of the dam have joined as one, and most of the dam sections of the right bank have reached the same levels as the left one.

The dam, 2,309 meters long and 185 meters high, was made of 16.1 million cubic meter concrete, dubbed by some as the "Great Wall across the Yangtze River".

Construction of the Three Gorges project, the largest in the world, began in 1994 and is scheduled for completion by 2009. The project will cost at least 180 billion yuan (US$22.5 billion).

(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2006)