Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo urged on January 24 that the transportation sector to focus on safe production and project quality so as to better serve the country's socioeconomic development.

In his letter to a national meeting on transportation which opened today in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, Wu asked the sector to establish and improve rules and regulations to ensure safe production and good quality of infrastructure construction projects.

Communications Minister Huang Zhendong said at the meeting thata total investment of 215.7 billion yuan was put in highway construction across the country last year, when 58,000 kilometers of new roads were added.

Today, China's roads exceed 1.33 million kilometers, including 11,000 kilometers of expressways, according to the minister.

Statistics show that China's highway transportation volume last year stood at 12.6 billion passengers and 9.9 billion tons of cargoes, a year-on-year increase of 0.8 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.