New Tourism Market Opportunities for Cities along East-West Economic Corridor

 The vendors of three small cities along the economic corridor, crossing Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, will have greater opportunities to access microfinance and financial capital and make use of wider areas to open shops through non-refundable aid worth US$2.5 million from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, to develop new markets and strengthen financing supports.

 

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will manage this non-refundable aid and launch three additional projects to upgrade the small cities along the economic corridor. The total fund of US$220 million was approved in 2012.

 

Mr Florian Steinberg, Urban Development Senior Specialist from the ADB's Southeast Asia Department, said: "This project focuses on supporting female vendors". The project helps the female vendors to run businesses on newly established markets, to access the child care services and to build the toilets to ensure their safe and sound settlement.

 

Three small markets will be built in Battambang city of Cambodia, - Cambodia, Kaysone Phomvihane city of Laos and Dong Ha city of Vietnam. Such the cities were selected based on scale facilities, proximity to agriculture, tourism and trade at their borders.

 

The study will be conducted to determine the most appropriate products to market based on existing sources, energy production and distribution chain. The microfinance institutions will help to determine and manage local loans; by 2017, there will have been 600 poor street vendors eligible for small loans and training courses about the products. At least 70 percent of loans aim to the female vendors.

 

Expectedly, the number of people who benefits from the projects in three cities in 2017 will have higher actual income than they did in 2013.

 

This project aims to promote the benefits gained from the development of production, trade and tourism in the East-West Economic Corridor. The bilateral trade among industrial parks, logistics services and other facilities under the value chain of the borders will bring more business opportunities for traders who are running businesses on the these markets.