The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide 500 million US dollars in loans for the building of a 380-kilometer-long railway in southwest China.

Chinese Minister of Finance Jin Renqing and Chino Tadao, ADB president, signed the contract Thursday in Shanghai amid the Global Conference on Scaling Up Poverty Reduction.

The total investment for the railway, connecting Wanzhou District in Chongqing Municipality and Yichang in Hubei Province, was 16.7 billion yuan (2 billion US dollars).

The railway will help to improve communication between western China and the east and contribute to the poverty alleviation in the Three Gorges region.