The Vietnamese government has just approved an agreement between Vietnam and China on building a bridge over the Red River to facilitate transport of passengers and goods, local newspaper Youth reported Monday.

Construction of the bridge, linking Vietnamese northern Lao Cai province with Hekou county in China's Yunnan province, is expected to start late this month, and open to traffic in mid-2007. The building of the bridge will help facilitate the development of two economic corridors and the Beibu Gulf economic belt involving many Chinese and Vietnamese localities.

The four-lane bridge, 21.5 meters in width and 295 meters in length, will also help promote tourism and trade exchanges between Vietnam's northwestern region and China's southwestern region.

In 2005, over 2.2 million tons of cargoes and 1.4 million passengers went through the international border gate of Lao Cai- Hekou, causing overload for the two existing bridges, according to officials from the Lao Cai People's Committee.

Vietnam's import and export turnover with China via the border gate has annually grown 15 percent in recent years, according to the committee. The figure is expected to surpass 1 billion U.S. dollars in 2012.

Economic and trade relations between the two countries have gained encouraging results in recent years. China's statistics show the bilateral trade surged 21.6 percent to reach 8.2 billion dollars in 2005. Of the total, China exported 5.64 billion dollars worth of goods to and imported 2.55 billion dollars, up 32.5 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively.

Source: Xinhua