China's costliest water transport project, a shipping channel dredging program to boost trade in the Yangtze River Delta area, is due to be completed in the middle of this month, Xinhua reported.

The 12-year program had a total cost of US$2.42 billion. The channel starts at Waigaoqiao, in Shanghai, and ends where the Yangtze River enters the East China Sea.

The program has proceeded in three phases since 1998, increasing the depth of the estuary shipping channel from seven meters to 12.5 meters. In comparison, a shipping channel dredging project on the Mississippi took 100 years to increase its depth from six meters to 10 meters.

The program was the most expensive ever water transport project in China.

The shallowness of the shipping channel at the estuary of the Yangtze River had long been a transport bottleneck and a hindrance to the local economies on the Yangtze River Delta, said Fan Yaxiang, party chief of the Yangtze River channel administration under the Ministry of Transport.