Hanoi - The Asian Development Bank announced Friday it had
approved a loan of 1.1 billion dollars, its largest ever, to build a
superhighway between Hanoi and the town of Lao Cai on the Chinese
border.
The highway, to be completed by 2012, will cut travel time for
trucks between Hanoi and the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming
from three days to less than one, the bank said.
'Traffic along the Ha Noi-Lao Cai corridor is already reaching
saturation levels in many areas,' said John Cooney, director of the
infrastructure division in ADB's Southeast Asia department. 'Without
this new highway, trade and growth would be suppressed.'
The ultimate goal is to link Kunming to its closest port, the
Vietnamese city of Haiphong. 'Haiphong is the most direct link,'
explained Paul Vallely, head of infrastructure at the ADB's Hanoi
office. 'There is a port in Beihai, in Guangxi province, but the
route is a bit convoluted.'
China and Vietnam are Asia's two fastest-growing economies, with a
trade relationship that rose to over 11 billion dollars in the first
11 months of 2007.
Trade between Lao Cai and the neighboring Chinese town of Hekou
increased from 351 million dollars in 2004 to an estimated 700
million dollars this year. That represented some 1 million tons of
cargo.
The highway is expected to increase opportunities for freight
cargo, as well as for tourist traffic to Vietnam's mountainous
northwest and to China's Yunnan province.
Much of the rationale behind the Lao Cai to Hanoi highway lies in
trade that is not yet happening, due to inadequate infrastructure, or
that cannot be measured because it bypasses formal customs procedures.
At the bridge linking Lao Cai to Hekou, much of the traffic
currently consists of people wheeling bicycles or hand carts loaded
down with boxes full of consumer electronics.
'At many of these border posts right now, trade is minimal,' said
Vallely. 'When you stand there looking at it, there's a hell of a lot
going on, but it doesn't appear in the formal statistics.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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