BEIJING (AFP) -- China's planning agency announced over the weekend that about 165 billion yuan (20 billion dollars) would be plowed into 12 major projects in the nation's western regions in the coming five years.

The investment is aimed at invigorating the nation's impoverished inland regions and includes railway lines, highways, small airports, industrial plants and hydroelectric projects, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a report seen Monday on its website.

Construction on all the projects has already begun, the commission said, including two hydro-electric dams on the Lancang river, also known as the Mekong river, after it flows into the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

"The 12 projects conform with the rational control of the nation's overall investment scale and the spirit of strengthening macroeconomic controls," the commission said. They also conform "to the need to develop a breakthrough in infrastructure construction in the western regions by 2010."

Also included in the new projects is a railway linking the capitals of Shanxi province and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, as well as two major coal mines in Inner Mongolia and Ningxia provinces, the commission said.

During the period from 2000-2005, China invested 1.0 trillion yuan in 70 major projects in its western regions, it said.