Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Moha Borvor Thipadei Hun Manet this afternoon mentioned that the Funan Techo Canal project has built a big nationalism in Cambodia. At a get-together and solidarity dinner with some 5,000 media practitioners on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day 2024, Samdech Thipadei Hun Manet expressed thanks to the media for reporting the citizens's support to this historical project. Regarding to this project, Deputy Prime Minister and First Vice President of the Council for the Development of Cambodia H.E. Sun Chanthol said this project had been thoroughly studied by a group of nearly 50 experts. Speaking at a press conference this morning, after a meeting with foreign diplomatic corps, including Vietnam, H.E. Sun Chanthol said that the Funan Techo Canal has negative impact less than that of the Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville Expressway and Phnom Penh-Bavet Expressway. The Funan Techo Canal project has very little impact, while the economic analysis and evaluation show that it wil l provide great benefits for the areas of trade, tourism, urban planning and construction and so on, he underlined. According to the project's feasibility study, the US$1.7 billion Funan Techo Canal project, which will be broken ground for construction at the end of 2024, is 180 kilometres long and 100 metres wide upstream and 80 metres downstream with two navigation lanes. The construction would take around four years to complete. The canal will link Prek Takeo of Mekong River to the sea in Kep province crossing four provinces: Kandal, Takeo, Kampot and Kep with a total of 1.6 million people living on either side of the waterway Source: Agence Kampuchea Presse