The bridge, on which construction started in March 2004, was officially opened last Wednesday.

It links the Lao province of Savannakhet with Thailand's Mukdahan in the Northeast.

The bridge is the key component of a major economic and infrastructure plan to facilitate regional transport, trade, investment and tourism.

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said the bridge would foster intra-regional trade and investment, facilitate travel to Burma and Vietnam and help extend the corridor to China, South Korea, India and Bangladesh.

Lao Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh said the bridge was important to a landlocked country and would enable it to boost its potential for transport services, trade and tourism.

A member of Asean since 1997, Laos is working hard to attain a threefold improvement in national living standards by 2020.

Development of the Mekong basin has been actively promot-

ed since the first half of the 1990s, after the restoration of peace in Cambodia and the rest of Indochina, as well as the transition to a market economy of socialist states in the post-Cold War era.

The first Friendship Bridge over the Mekong, linking Nong Khai and the Lao capital of Vientiane, opened in 1994 with Australian funding. The second 1.6km, two-lane bridge was funded via loans from the Japan Bank for Inter-national Cooperation (JBIC) of 4 billion yen (Bt1.23 billion) to both Laos and Thailand. It was the JBIC's first Overseas Development Assistance loan for cross-border infrastructure between two states.

The bridge will play a major part in giving landlocked Laos access to ports in Thailand and Vietnam.

It is part of the East-West Corridor route, which originates from the central Vietnamese port of Da Nang and runs north along Vietnam's National Highway 1 to Dong Ha. The route then connects with Laos via National Highway 9 and further connects Laos and Thailand via the new bridge.

The route connecting Vietnam and Savannakhet has been improved in the past through assistance from multilateral agencies and Japan. In Thailand, the JBIC financed improvements on existing highways that are part of the East-West Corridor. The new bridge will connect all of these routes.

Although the bridge has international border checkpoints, visitor flow will begin only after legal agreements are finalised between Thailand and Laos. Cars travelling across the bridge will be charged Bt50 each and trucks Bt350.