VIENTIANE, Dec 8 (NNN-KPL) – A special freight train carrying 25 cold-chain containers loaded with 500 tonnes of fresh Lao bananas, departed from the Vientiane station in Laos, yesterday.
The train will travel all the way north, across mountains and rivers along the China-Laos Railway to Changsha, capital of southern China’s Hunan Province.
This is the first “banana train” that travels directly to a specific Chinese city, since the China-Laos Railway was put into operation a year ago. The “banana train” is also the debuting train under the “One Way, Two Parks” project, between Hunan provincial government and Laos.
Earlier this year, Hunan Province and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Laos, jointly signed the memorandum of understanding on cooperation between the two sides, on the joint construction of the above-mentioned “One Way, Two Parks” project.
Under the project, the two sides will use the China-Laos Railway as a channel to comprehensively strengthen international agricultural cooperation, and economic and trade exchanges between Hunan Province and Laos, through the joint construction of a linkage between the modern agricultural industrial park in the Lao capital, Vientiane and related industrial parks in Hunan Province.
Since the signing of the memorandum, the Hunan provincial government has promoted Hunan Xuanye Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., Hunan Agricultural Development Investment Group Co., Ltd., Hongxing Industry Group Co., Ltd. and other leading agricultural enterprises in the province and abroad, to jointly promote the import of Lao agricultural products and domestic distribution, under the cooperation framework.
Banana is among the top agricultural products exported from Laos. During the first half of 2022, banana exports were worth 141 million U.S. dollars, only after cassava exports, which made around 250 million dollars.– NNN-KPL
