Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Tanzanian counterpart Edward
Lowassa on Friday jointly inspected the construction site of the
new Tanzanian National Stadium being built by a Chinese engineering
company.
With a seating capacity of 60,000 people, the envisaged
Tanzanian National Stadium up to FIFA and Olympic competition
standards will be another big project assisted by the Chinese,
since the construction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway.
The Chinese premier appealed to Chinese contractors from the
Beijing Construction Engineering Group to build the new national
stadium into a monumental building of Sino-Tanzania friendship and
an ultra-modern stadium which will do good to the health of the
Tanzanian people.
Tanzanian Prime Minister Lowassa described the construction of
the new Tanzanian National Stadium as one more crystallization of
bilateral friendship and cooperation.
Former Tanzanian president Benjamin William Mkapa laid the
foundation stone for the construction of the new national stadium
in July last year and the construction of the stadium is scheduled
to complete by January next year.
The governments of China and Tanzania are jointly footing the
construction bill amounting to 54.6 million U.S. dollars.
The existing Tanzanian National Stadium, built in the 1960s, has
a seating capacity of some 6,000 people.
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(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2006)