THREE GORGES DAM SITE, Hubei Province, May 17 (Xinhua) -- The Three Gorges Dam Project will have earned enough revenue to have paid its construction costs in less than a decade after coming into full operation, the project's chief accountant said Wednesday.

    Within ten years of fully coming on-line the dam will have generated 1 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity earning an estimated at 250 billion yuan (31.5 billion U.S. dollars). The project, when fully completed in 2009, is expected to cost 180 billion yuan (22.5 billion U.S. dollars).

    Yang Ya, chief accountant of China Three Gorges Project Development Corporation said his calculations were based on the average electricity price of 0.25 yuan (0.03 U.S. dollar) per kilowatt-hour.

    As of the end of April, 126 billion yuan (15.75 billion U.S. dollars) had been spent on construction. Already more than 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity has been generated from the completed, early phases of the project, earning revenue of 25 billion yuan (3.125 billion U.S. dollars), said Yang.

    Launched in 1993, the Three Gorges Project, including a 2,309-meter-long, 185-meter-high dam and 26 generators, is being built in three phases on the middle reaches of the Yangtze, China's longest river.

    The construction of the dam itself is expected to be completed on Saturday.

    In accordance with the construction schedule, the entire project will be completed in 2009 when it is expected to start generating 84.7 billion kwh of electricity annually.

    Besides its power generating capacity, the Three Gorges will also tame flooding on the Yangtze, fuel industrial growth in the area and improve shipping. Enditem