GUANGZHOU'S municipal government has earmarked for sale a plot of prime land to raise funds for the construction of the first phase of the Guangzhou Metro.
The plot, in Tianhe district, has an area of 5.2 sq km.
Vice-mayor Shi Anhai said yesterday the State Council had approved the revised metro plan, which would increase the length from 12.7 km to 18.1 km and the number of stations from 12 to 16.
He also contradicted an earlier remark by Guangdong governor Zhu Senlin that French companies would obtain some contracts to supply facilities for the metro.
He said that on preliminary examination, the bids of the French firms had been less competitive than those from the United States, Germany and Britain, and that their tenders had been ''a different matter because their country sold fighter airplanes to Taiwan''.
The construction of the first phase will start at the end of the year and will take about five years to complete.
Mr Shi said almost half of the one billion yuan (about HK$1.35 billion) construction cost would be financed by foreign government loans, from the countries of the companies given the facilities contracts.
