Vietnam has recently lowered transit fees by 40 percent for transporting cargoes to three countries by railway, local newspaper Vietnam News reported Friday.

The lower freight charge, in accordance with the International Transit Tariffs, is applied to routes linking Vietnam with China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, said the stated-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation, the country's sole railway operator.

The corporation plans to construct a warehouse at the Mongolian border to facilitate further transport of goods at lower charges, which will eventually lure more Vietnamese enterprises into transporting goods by railway, instead of sea.

Now, the railway takes 15 days to cover 5,000 km from the capital of Hanoi to Mongolian and Russian borders, while transporting cargoes by sea takes 45 days, the corporation said.

The corporation transported over 1 million tons of goods across the Vietnamese border in 2005. Meanwhile, its total revenues rose 3.1 percent to over 4.73 trillion Vietnamese dong (297.48 million U.S. dollars).

Source: Xinhua