Government leaders of the six Asian nations sharing the Lancang-Mekong River have arrived here for the second summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation Program, to be held in this capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province on Monday and Tuesday.

With the theme of "a stronger GMS partnership for common prosperity," the summit will offer an opportunity for heads of government from Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss topics like achievements and challenges in GMS cooperation, common guidelines governing future GMS cooperation, and the road ahead towards sustainable development.

Initiated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1992, the GMS program aims to improve economic and social development in the region through reinforcing economic links between the six countries along the Lancang-Mekong River.

By April this year, the project-oriented cooperation mechanism had launched 119 cooperative projects in the fields of traffic, energy resources, telecommunications, environment protection, human resources development, investment, trade, tourism and agriculture, polling some 5.3 billion US dollars of investment.

The GMS mechanism has also identified 11 "flagship programs," of which the most visible are the development of three economic corridors across the six member countries with proposed road routes stretching from north to south and east to west, as well as in the southern areas.

The ADB, a major sponsor of the GMS program, has so far offered 1.4 billion US dollars in direct loans and technical assistance worth 60 million US dollars.

The summit meeting is the supreme decision-making organ of the GMS mechanism and is held once every three years, with the six member nations playing host in turn according to the alphabetic order of the country names. The first GMS summit was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in November 2002.

The second GMS summit is expected to pass a leaders' declaration, which reviews ongoing GMS programs and outlines cooperation in the future, and a number of GMS cooperative documents on transportation, information superhighway construction, power trade operating and animal epidemics prevention.

The ministerial conference is the regular decision-making organ of the GMS mechanism, and is held at an annual basis to deal with GMS affairs.

Source: Xinhua