The Three Gorges Dam project will be completed on schedule in 2009, a senior company official was quoted as saying yesterday. Vice-president of the Three Gorges Project Development Company Li Yongan said construction had progressed without any delays, the China News Service reported. Mr Li was optimistic that phase two of the project to dam the Yangtze could be completed by late 2003 and the first batch of generators would start supplying electricity in October that year. After phase two, officials plan to install a further 26 generators from 2004 to 2009. The Three Gorges Dam – the world’s largest hydro-electric project – has been overshadowed by reports of misuse of funds. Officials recently claimed the reports were exaggerated. Yesterday, Xinhua reported that 4,000 people displaced by the project would be resettled in Shandong province. They would be moved to rural areas in Jinan, Qingdao, Yantai, Weifang and Weihai by August next year, the agency quoted Shandong province deputy governor Lin Shuxiang as saying. He said the province would allocate 330 hectares of land to the migrants. A total of 612 people from Zhongxian County were resettled in Shandong this year. According to Xinhua, an additional 40,000 people would be moved out of the Three Gorges area and resettled by November next year. Mr Li said the dam’s construction costs were lower than expected. The original budget was 203.9 billion yuan (HK$192 billion) but low inflation had brought the cost down to about 180 billion yuan.