The Ministry of Railways has a clean book detailing capital
expenditure on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway construction as all costs
were closely scrutinized, a railway official said on Thursday.
"We made careful plans and calculations on the railway
construction expenditure so as to make best use of the huge
investment," said Zhu Zhensheng, vice director of the ministry's
office in charge of the railway.
He said that by the end of May, about 29.46 billion yuan had
been spent on the Golmud-Lhasa section which runs 1,142 kilometers
at more than 4,000 meters above sea level, with the highest point
at 5,072 meters.
Seventy-five percent of funding came from treasury bonds while
the remaining 25 percent came from a special fund for railway
construction. The budgeted investment for the section stands at
33.09 billion yuan.
Zhu said public tendering of the projects had saved about 1.8
billion yuan, which had been set aside to deal with
contingencies.
He said the government had regularly inspected expenditure and
reported no cases of misuse or graft.
A special inspection team under the National Development and
Reform Commission targeting the country's major projects had given
"a positive assessment" of the program, he said.
The Qinghai-Tibet railway stretches 1,956 km from Xining,
capital of Qinghai Province, to Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous
Region. The section from Xining to Golmud began operation in
1984.
(China Daily June 30, 2006)