China's Sinohydro Group Ltd. recently announced that its board of directors has approved a plan to spend as much as USD39.2 million on preliminary work at a hydroelectric project in Laos.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the company's board has also approved an investment of CNY4.41 billion (USD724 million) in a construction project in Yantai. Yantai is located in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong. 

Sinohydro made the announcements in a filing at the Shanghai stock exchange. China's biggest builder of hydroelectric dams, however, did not provide details on the transactions. 

Sinohydro ranked 14th in Engineering News-Record's Top 225 Global Contractors in 2012. The said listing ranks companies according to their annual revenue. The state-owned hydropower engineering and construction company also ranked 6th biggest among Chinese construction companies, Engineering News-Record said. 

Earlier this year, the government of Uganda awarded Sinohydro a USD2.2 billion power station construction project. The Chinese company will build the 600-megawatt Karuma Power Station, which will be the largest in the country, said Ugandan newspaper Red Pepper.