By Feng Yingqiu
YANGON, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Six cargo vessels donated by India have been transferred to the Myanmar side over the past two days as part of the joint Myanmar-India Kaladan Multimodal Transportation Project.
Handed over by India at the Sittway Port in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, the six cargo vessels, worth 81.29 million U.S. dollars, are in readiness to transport goods and passengers along the river.
Dredging will be underway for the heavy vessels to embark at the port which will accommodate goods from Rakhine and other states at the end of this year.
The 45-meter-long and 9.5 meter-wide vessels, each having a cargo capacity of 300 tons, were built at Dala, Dagon Seikkan and Dawbon dockyards in Yangon.
Meanwhile, two industrial zones will also be built in Haka and Paletwa in Chin state next year by the Chin state government as part of the Kaladan project.
The 480-million-U.S. dollar Kaladan project is being implemented in three phases with the first phase including construction of Sittway Deep Seaport and Paletwa Jetty, dredging the Kaladan waterway and construction of six vessels, while the second phase covers construction of 109 km-long road to link Paletwa with the border region and the third phase comprises construction of a 60-km highway between Laungtalai, India's Mizoram State and Myanmar's Chin state.
According to officials, the completion of waterway and highway project passing through Myanmar's Rakhine and Chin states would help support better transport and trade between the regional countries.
Myanmar and India signed the contract on Kaladan Multimodal Transportation Project in 2008.
According to official statistics, India's investment in Myanmar amounted to 739.705 million U.S. dollars.
Annual bilateral trade between the two countries reached 1.743 billion dollars as of the near-end of the fiscal year 2016-17, of which Myanmar's export to India stood at 865.948 million dollars, while its import from India represented 877.052 million dollars.
In addition to the existing border trade zones operational in Tamu and Reed, the two countries are discussing to open one more trade zone each in Htantalan in Myanmar's western Chin State and in Pan Khwar, Mizoram State in India.
