URUMQI, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Authorities plan to build new rural roads and upgrade existing rural roads in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region this year.

The region will build or upgrade 10,000 km of roads in the countryside to further improve local transportation conditions, according to the regional department of transport.

Last year, Xinjiang invested about 8.1 billion yuan (about 1.2 billion U.S. dollars) building new rural roads and upgrading rural roads totaling more than 15,000 km.

By 2019, Xinjiang had a combined length of more than 133,000 km of rural roads open to traffic, benefiting more than nine million farmers and herdsmen.