Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (2nd R) talks with Chinese construction workers, who build a Chinese-aided gymnasium, in Dar Es Salaam, capital of Tanzania, on June 23, 2006. (Xinhua Photo)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Tanzanian counterpart Edward Lowassa on June 23 (Friday) jointly inspected the construction site of the new Tanzanian National Stadium being built by a Chinese engineering company.

With a seating capacity of 60,000 people, the envisaged Tanzanian National Stadium up to FIFA and Olympic competition standards will be another big project assisted by the Chinese, since the construction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway.

The Chinese premier appealed to Chinese contractors from the Beijing Construction Engineering Group to build the new national stadium into a monumental building of Sino-Tanzania friendship and an ultra-modern stadium which will do good to the health of the Tanzanian people.

Tanzanian Prime Minister Lowassa described the construction of the new Tanzanian National Stadium as one more crystallization of bilateral friendship and cooperation.

Former Tanzanian president Benjamin William Mkapa laid the foundation stone for the construction of the new national stadium in July last year and the construction of the stadium is scheduled to complete by January next year.

The governments of China and Tanzania are jointly footing the construction bill amounting to 54.6 million U.S. dollars.

The existing Tanzanian National Stadium, built in the 1960s, has a seating capacity of some 6,000 people.