The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Tuesday said that it has approved a loan of 200 million US dollars to help improve transportation and connectivity in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south China, where more than 5.6 million people will benefit from the project.

The ADB said in a statement that the Guangxi Roads Development II Project will construct a 188-km expressway from Nanning, the regional capital, to Baise City in Guangxi bordering on Yunnan Province, and upgrade or build 775 km of local roads.

"It (the loan) will also procure equipment for road maintenance and traffic management and ensure project supervision and capacity building," it said.

The project will link Yunnan and Guizhou provinces with Guangxi's southern ports of Fangcheng, Qinzhou and Beihai. It will provide the western region with better access to Guangdong and Hunan and help improve linkages with its border with Vietnam It will also help complement the Greater Mekong subregion's and Asian Highway road networks, the ADB said.

The bank noted that despite the strong economic growth during the past two decades, China continues to experience a substantial regional imbalance.

According to the ADB, Guangxi is one of the three least developed provinces in China, with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) equivalent to only 62 percent of the national average. Of its 81 counties, 49 are classified as poor.

"Pockets of high poverty and minority groups are concentrated in the western part of Guangxi, the main project area," says Kim Jraiw, an ADB Transport Specialist.

"One of the most urgent needs to reduce poverty in this region is to improve the road transport infrastructure. By reducing transportation time and costs, the project will help promote private business, raise incomes, give better access to services, and create jobs to boost economic growth and contribute to poverty reduction in Guangxi," he added.

Besides the expressway, the project will support the building and upgrading of 25 km of connecting roads, 250 km of intercounty and 500 km of minority village roads serving isolated areas.

To boost road safety, the project will take a new integrated approach that includes enforcement, engineering, education and emergency issues; and promote the concept community-oriented management of roadside stations.

It will also consider other factors, such as an HIV/AIDS prevention program to offset the risk of the roads creating a new conduit for transmission, transport services, and control of overloaded vehicles.

"ADB places high priority on poverty reduction in its developing member countries, and integration of road transport infrastructure with other policy issues is crucial to the success of our program," said Nigel Rayner, Director of ADB's East and Central Asia Transportation and Communications Division.

"Links with transport services, HIV/AIDS prevention measures, road safety strategy, control of overloaded vehicles, and road maintenance are included in the scope of this project to enhance sustainability and to maximize benefits of the project particularly for the poor," Rayner added.

Of the 5.6 million people who will benefit from the project, about 90 percent are from ethnic minorities and 46 percent are poor. The project will help improve their access to 93 hospitals, 907 schools, 5 key county centers, 20 tourism attractions, 95 village markets, 70 townships, 745 villages and isolated communities.

Source: Xinhua