Freight volume of China-Laos Railway up 194 percent year on year during H1

Customs authorities in Kunming City, southwest China’s Yunnan Province handled nearly 2.15 million tons of cargo transported via the China-Laos Railway during the first half of this year, up by 194.4 percent from 2022.

The 1,035-kilometer China-Laos Railway, which connects Kunming with the Lao capital city of Vientiane, began operation on December 3, 2021.

It is a flagship project linking China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Laos's strategy of "transforming itself from a landlocked to a land-linked country". In Laos, the railway stretches 414 kilometers from the border port Boten that links southwestern China and northern Laos, to Vientiane in the south. The railway is built according to Chinese management and technical standards, with a designed speed of 160 kilometers per hour.

The China-Laos Railway is a section of the Kunming-Singapore Railway Project, which connects Kunming with Singapore, passing through Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia.

In addition to freight transportation, the China-Laos Railway began running passenger trains on April 13, 2023.

Each day, one train runs from Kunming to Vientiane, while another will run in the opposite direction. The train stops at eight stations along the route, whose total travel time standing at 10.5 hours, with the time for customs clearance included.