THE country will invest 100 billion yuan (US$12.9 billion) in projects in Tibet, including an extension of its first railway, State media reported, as the government seeks to boost its image in the remote region through development.

The money will be spent on 180 projects in the years up to 2010, including upgrading an airport; extending availability of drinking water, electricity and telephone lines to herding communities; and building a railway from regional capital Lhasa to Xigaze, the region’s second-largest city, the Xinhua news agency reported late Monday.

The funding would help pay for power plants and telecommunications facilities in remote villages and to protect natural forests.

The projects would see 80 percent of Tibet’s villages connected by road, safe drinking water for all its 2.76 million people and free education up to high school for all children, said Hao Peng, the region’s vice chairman.

The construction of the region’s fourth airport in the northern Ngari was also included, said Hao, but he did not elaborate.

The railway connecting Lhasa to other parts of China that opened in July last year has become a symbol of the government’s efforts to develop the region.

Hao said the new wave of infrastructure investment would be tilted toward herding regions “so farmers and herders and the grassroots population will fully enjoy the fruits of reform and development,” Xinhua reported.

Between 1994 and 2005, the Central Government invested about 63 billion yuan in large infrastructure projects in Tibet.

(SD-Agencies)