Myanmar Prime Minister General Soe Win left Yangon Sunday for Kunming, China, to attend the Second Summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) on Economic Cooperation Program due to kick off on Monday.

It is Soe Win's second trip to China for a summit meeting since he became the prime minister last October. In November last year he attended a business and investment summit of China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as the first China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning.

The two-day GMS Summit in the capital of China's southwest Yunnan province will review the subregion's ongoing programs and outline cooperation in the future.

Initiated by the Asian Development Bank, the GMS-Economic Cooperation was founded in 1992 to bring together six countries --China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam along the Mekong river.

Myanmar has worked for closer economic ties together with other members of the grouping by taking part in the implementation of the GMS program which prioritizes some 100 projects in eight sectors including investment, trade, transport, tourism, telecommunications, energy, environment and human resources development.

The 4,500-km Mekong river originates from China and runs through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The GMS has a combined land area of nearly 2.3 million square-kilometers and home to more than 250 million people.

The first GMS summit was held in 2002 in Phnom Penh.

Source: Xinhua