Found at: http://www.competitiveness.org/article/articleprint/429/-1/10/

World Bank aid for Inner Mongolia

China received a loan of 100 million dollar from the World Bank in order to promote and sustain the development of cross-border trade in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia.

It is hoped that these improvements in cross-border trade, in turn, will lower transport costs, increase income from external trade, and raise incomes in Inner Mongolia, the country’s third-largest province however one of the poorest provinces of the western region.

The objective of the project is to maximize the use of the transport infrastructure to promote international trade through Inner Mongolia and especially the Hulunbeier district. It shall aid the general development of the Hulunbeier district, especially in preparing it to cope with the increasingly important role the central government has assigned to it to be the country’s main contact point for trading with Russia. In doing so, the project aims to:

• improve the capacity of transport infrastructure
• develop a freight transfer and trade facilitation program to meet the growing demand for cross-border trade
• provide technical assistance to the Inner Mongolia Communications Department
• help the Hulunbeier district to build its capacity to plan, facilitate, and manage increasing demand for transportation of international trade traffic

The loan for the Inner Mongolia Transport and Trade Corridor Project has a maturity of 20 years, including a five year grace period.