The Japan Bank for International Cooperation has provided a loan of 7.507 billion Japanese yen (about US$67.47 million) for a tree planting project in east China's Jiangxi Province.

The project, which began Tuesday, will cover shelter forest, timber forest, projects to fence hills for tree planting and will improve low-yield and bamboo forests. It will cover a total of 219,000 hectares.

Wei Yunhua, deputy head of the Jiangxi Provincial Forestry Bureau, said the project will be carried out through 2009. Trees will be planted for the first four years and forest protection will be practiced in the last two years, Wei said.  

(Xinhua News Agency September 29, 2004)