GUANGZHOU: South China’s Guangdong Province will continue to expand its web of expressways as part of a series of key infrastructure initiatives in the next few years.
By the end of this year, Guangdong would have more than 2,300km of expressways, becoming the top region in China in terms of expressways, top officials said.
Huang Huahua, newly elected governor of the booming province, said at a provincial economic work conference yesterday that an advanced expressway network would sustain the fast and steady growth of the economy.
“Construction of expressways will be given top priority this year,” said Huang at the conference, at which economic policy for 2003 is expected to be hammered out.
In addition to accelerating construction of the Xiaotang-Guangzhou section of the Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway and 13 other ongoing projects, ground is scheduled to be broken on seven new expressway projects within the year.
The new expressways, totalling 494km, would cost more than 26.8bil yuan (RM12.27bil).
The projects include the Guangzhou-Zhuhai section of the Zhuhai-Beijing Expressway, the Zhanjiang-Guangxi section of the Zhanjiang-Chongqing Expressway, the Eastern and Western sections of the Around Pearl River Delta Expressway, the Heyuan-Meizhou Expressway, the Yunfu-Zhaoqing Expressway, the Heyuan-Jianxi section of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Expressway and the Guangdong-Hong Kong Western Expressway.
In addition to the expressway projects, Huang also promised to speed up construction of nine other key projects this year.
The key projects involve new and high-tech industries, environmental protection, automobiles, power plants, liquefied natural gas, water conservancy, medicines, culture, and petrochemical and oil refineries. – China Daily
