The commencement ceremony of the “Irrigation System Improvement Project for Recipient Country Kyrghyzstan” with its project management task undertaken by ECIDI was held successfully on May 3. President of Kyrghyzstan Sooronbay Sharipovich Jeenbekov was invited to attend the ceremony. He made groundbreaking with Counselor Sun He from the Economic and Commercial Counsellor‘s Office of the Embassy of PRC in Kyrghyzstan and buried the Payer Letter autographed by Sooronbay Sharipovich Jeenbekov into the cornerstone as per Kyrgyz custom. Several hundred persons from many government agencies and news media units such as Ministry of Agriculture of Kyrghyzstan, government of Issyk-Kul State, district government, Project Management Department of ECIDI, construction contractors, Xinhua News Agency, Wen Wei Po, Cultural Development in the Central Asian Silk Road and ALA-TOO TV station (local media) attended the commencement ceremony.

The Irrigation System Improvement Project for Recipient Country Kyrghyzstan is the first agricultural irrigation project implemented by China in the “localization” mode (construction by the recipient country independently) and also the first infrastructure construction project undertaken by ECIDI in Central Asia and Russian-speaking regions. Upon completion, the project will increase the irrigation area for Kyrghyzstan by 5,410 hectares, improve the water supply guarantee rate of 22,100 hectares of irrigated land and benefit a population of 40,000, helpful to facilitate the social and economic development of Kyrghyzstan and promote the development of bilateral relationship. The successful holding of commencement ceremony of the project marks that the first agricultural project implemented for Kyrghyzstan by China has entered the construction stage formally and laid a good foundation for subsequent projects.