Beijing, July 22 (IANS): Toll collection will continue in China, the authorities said.

China's Ministry of Transport (MOT) has begun soliciting public opinion on a revised regulation for toll roads, saying that the country will continue to collect tolls on highways.

The previous regulation allows road construction to be financed by tolls that may be collected for up to 30 years, reported Global Times.

The revised version released on Tuesday said that for extremely costly projects, the toll collection period could exceed 30 years.

Ministry spokesperson Xu Chengguang said China only had 34,288 km of highway in 2004, but a decade later the network had gone up to 112,000 km, the world's largest.

Toll highways account for about three percent of the road system, the officials said.

"It is unlikely that toll collection will stop, given the large debt that is outstanding for highways," Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.