Road 5 to be Asean Road

[geovalin]

National Road 5 which connects Phnom Penh to the border with Thailand at Banteay Meanchey will soon be expanded to strengthen Asean’s trade connectivity between Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday assistance from the Japanese government to improve National Road 5 will enable it to become the highway that connects Asean.

Mr. Hun Sen said the expansion of National Road 5 will be in three stages. He said the first stage of the construction will be to improve the road from Battambang to Banteay Meanchey province. The second stage, Mr. Hun Sen added, will be from Kandal province’s Prek Kdam district to Pursat province and the last stage will be from Pursat to Battambang province. Vasim Sorya, spokesman at the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation, said the expanded National Road 5 will connect to National Road 1 which runs to the Vietnamese border at Prey Veng province’s Neak Loeung. The Japanese-funded 2.2-kilometer Tsubasa Bridge, across the Mekong River, links Neak Loeung to a highway that connects to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Mr. Sorya said the first stage of the expansion of National Road 5 will start early next year and the new 400-kilometer highway will have four lanes. He added that expansion in stages two and three will be in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Mey Kalyan, senior advisor to the Supreme National Economic Council, said that the move will help boost Cambodia’s economic activities, especially in the context of regional market integration in the Asean Economic Community.

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