The signing ceremony of "The Framework Agreement of Investment and Cooperation on the Investment and Construction of the Three Gorges Project in Yichang Area to Complete Multimodal System Integrated Transport Hub" was held by the government of Yichang City and the Hubei Provincial Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd. in Yichang.

Huang Chuping, member of the Standing Committee of Provincial Committee of Hubei Province and the secretary of Yichang Municipal Committee of the CPC and Zhang Siyi, chairman of the board of the Hubei Provincial Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd. attended the ceremony and delivered speeches. Ma Xuming, mayor and deputy secretary of Yichang Municipal Committee of the CPC and Long Chuanhua, general manager of the company signed an agreement on behalf of both parties. Leaders of Yichang City including Song Wenbao, Ma Xuejun, Yuan Weidong, Wang Wanxiu, attended the ceremony.

Huang said, facing the major strategic opportunities such as "One Belt and One Road", the Yangtze River economic belt, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River City Cluster, the Three Gorges City Cluster, the construction of a modern mega-city and the move to the first non-capital city of the central China are being accelerated in Yichang. The Hubei Provincial Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd. invested the construction of the Three Gorges portage integrated transport system, improved the regional transportation hub, and built the comprehensive three-dimensional transport corridor of Yichang, which is a quick move responding to the major strategy --"one central city and two deputy cities"of Hubei Provincial Party Committee and Hubei Provincial Government It is conducive to fully play the role of the Yangtze River golden waterway, to further bring about  benifit of the Three Gorges Project navigation. It has great significance of strengthening regional integrated transport hub of Yichang, optimizing the industrial layout, speeding up the development of modern service industry, and promoting the new-type urbanization. Yichang will provide qualified and efficient services, continue to create favorable environment for development, strive to achieve win-win cooperation and promote common development.

Zhang Siyi said the "Agreement" would be seriously implemented so as to make new contributions to build Yichang into a mega-city and develop Hubei Province to be a supporting and leading city.

According to the "Agreement", the project will include 95 berths of Yangtze River port, 258 km of railway, 345 km of highway, 85 square kilometers of urban land of integrated development, 65 km of pipeline, with a total investment of 150 billion  RMB; it will be completed in 10 years with an average annual investment of about 15 billion RMB. The main tasks of construction are as follows: improving the Three Gorges portage integrated transport system in  constructing transshipment ports, railways and highways on both sides of the Yangtze River and upside and downside of the Three Gorges dam; building a sound transport system of waterway-railway, waterway-highroad, and pipeline to break the shipping bottleneck of the Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam; constructing the new integrated town of "port, production, and city", including new city of Baiyang Port, Taipingxi-the new tourism town, Yidu (Lucheng)-the peninsula new town and Three Gorges portage new logistics town; strengthening the integrated transport hub of Yichang area, constructing the railway between Dangyang and Yuan’an, Yaojiagang Port, Tianjiahe Port, Qixingtai Port, Zhijiang Port, Jiangbei portage highway,  the Yichang segment of highway between Yidu and Laifeng, the highway from Shennongjia to Xingshan to Changyang to Wufeng, the highway from Zhijiang, Hubei Province to Shimen, Hunan Province.

(Reporter Zheng Guanghua)