Guangdong and nine other provinces signed an agreement Saturday to integrate transport in the Pan Pearl River Delta in a bid to boost economic cooperation.

The provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Hainan, Guizhou, Sichuan, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality are Guangdong's partners in the ambitious plan to establish a huge regional economic community.

The 10 regions have agreed to abandon the practice of duplicating inter-province bus routes and allow transport companies to run the routes regardless of their counterparts' schedules.

Enterprises are encouraged to operate cross-province tourist transport routes while limitations on charter bus routes have been lifted.

Guangdong has finished building expressways to Fujian and Hunan and has rebuilt several State and provincial roads leading out of the province. Expressways to Jiangxi and Chongqing are also being built. By the year 2005, Guangdong will have at least one expressway and several State and provincial roads to every neighboring region. All of Guangdong's export roads will be completed by 2007.

A total of 26 billion yuan (US$3.12 billion) will be spent on building roads in Guangdong this year with a record 450 kilometers of expressways to be finished. Roads in the province will total 111,200 kilometers in length. Of these, 2,300 are expressways.

(Shenzhen Daily December 1, 2003)