Vietnam's Deoca Group said on Wednesday it had set up a joint venture with Laos' Petroleum Trading Lao (PetroTrade) to study the possibility of jointly building a railway connecting the two countries, with a possible price tag of 149.55 trillion dong ($6.31 billion).
The 554.7-kilometer railway would link Vientiane, the capital of land-locked Laos, with Vung Ang Port in Vietnam's central province of Ha Tinh, Deoca said in a statement.
The railway would also be connected to the $6-billion high-speed rail line from China's Kunming city and Vientiane that opened in December 2021, according to the statement.
It didn't provide a time frame for the construction of the railway nor how the companies would fund the project.
($1 = 23,710 dong)
(Reuters - Reporting by Khanh Vu; Editing by Sharon Singleton)