Quang Nam and Da Nang have agreed to start dredging a 28km section of the Co Co River to boost commercial water traffic between Hoi An and Da Nang.

The Co Co River connects Da Nang and Hoi An.

Vice chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Le Tri Thanh, told Viet Nam News the project was scheduled for operation in 2020.

Mr Thanh said the project would cost 1.24 trillion VND (US$55 million) to expand inner waterway services between the two tourism hubs, which have largely been neglected due to the use of roads.

He said the province had already dredged a 9km stretch of the river.

The waterway project will include 50-seat boats, bridges, wharves and recreational centres as alternatives to exploring Da Nang and Hoi An by car or motorbike.

Da Nang also plans to launch eight inner river tours.

According to the city's tourism department, 660,000 tourists had booked river tours in 2019.

The launch of the project would help ease traffic between Hoi An – a UNESCO world heritage site – and Da Nang.

Da Nang’s port hosted 74 cruise ships carrying 87,000 international tourists in 2018 – 29.9 per cent of the country’s total cruise tourists – and almost all cruise tourists visited Hoi An.

In 2017, Da Nang and Quang Nam Province inked an agreement on integrated management of the Vu Gia-Thu Bon river basin and Quang Nam-Da Nang coastline with support from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International (ISET-International).

(Source: VNS)