Special report: Premier Wen visits Laos, attends GMS Summit

    HANOI, March 29 (Xinhua) -- "The Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) cooperation is an important link in the process of economic integration and connectivity of GMS countries, fostering as well as supplementing bilateral and regional cooperation," Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung stated Saturday.

    The GMS cooperation has created forums for countries in the Mekong River basin, an important location full of cooperation and development potentials, to strengthen cooperation and coordination to solve such common issues as economic integration, poverty reduction and environmental protection, thus helping reinforce peace, stability, cooperation and development in the basin, the prime minister told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

    Through cooperation among the six GMS members, namely Laos, China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand, socioeconomic infrastructure, especially transport in the sub-region has improved considerably, accelerating its economic growth and connectivity.

    Economic corridors in the sub-region like the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC), the North-South corridor, and two corridors involving such Vietnamese and Chinese localities as Kunming-Lao Cai-Hanoi-Hai Phong and Nanning-Lang Son-Hanoi-Hai Phong will become operational soon.

    "These economic corridors are arteries which vitalize the GMS economic development. Through infrastructure development, the GMS cooperation has made active contributions to accelerating poverty reduction, narrowing development gap, and improving life of peoples in the Mekong River basin," Dung stated.

    The facilitation of cross-border movement of goods and people via procedure simplification and one-window and one-stop services has slashed cost and time considerably, helping step up development of trade, tourism and investment in the GMS, he said, noting that the time needed to transport a container from Vietnam's northern Hai Phong port to China's Kunming city will decrease to only one day in 2015 from around two days currently and three days and a half in 2000.