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Guangdong plans more road, port facilities

Andy Chen

The Guangdong government is set to invest 290 billion yuan in land and sea transportation infrastructure over the next five years.

Zhang Yuanyi, head of the Guangdong Transportation Bureau, said that in its 11th Five-Year Plan, the bureau had proposed to the central government that it invest 226 billion yuan in roads, including expressways, and 64 billion yuan in ports and rivers.

Guangdong aims to build 2,000km of expressway between next year and 2010, taking the total length to 5,000km. The investment will amount to 175 million yuan, said Mr Zhang.

Guangdong's existing 2,500km of expressways rank second in the mainland, after Shandong province. An additional 500km is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year in Guangdong.

Mr Zhang said the government aimed to lengthen its expressways to 8,800km by the end of 2030, with an investment of 400 billion yuan. It also plans to invest 60.5 billion yuan to build 150 berths for 10,000-tonne ships over the next five years.

Annual container throughput is expected to jump from 630 million tonnes to 1.44 billion tonnes in 2010 with an annual growth of 16 per cent.

Official statistics show that Guangdong's GDP grew at a rate of 12.6 per cent year on year in the first half of this year. In the same period last year, it expanded by 15.1 per cent, its best performance ever.

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