Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh speaks at the 9th Meeting of the State Steering Committee for important national and focal transport projects – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
The meeting was conducted in a combination of direct and online forms between the Government Headquarters and 46 provinces and centrally-run cities that have important national and focal transport projects.
The meeting was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha, Deputy Head of the Steering Committee; members of the Steering Committee including ministers, heads of central agencies, agencies under the Government; Chairpersons of the People’s Committees of provinces and cities; representatives of project management boards, state economic groups, investors, consulting units, and construction contractors.
The Prime Minister asks participating delegates to discuss, assess the situation, and propose solutions to shorten the progress of projects, ensuring the quality, technical/artistic aspects of the projects – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
2024 is a year of acceleration
Opening the meeting, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said that the whole country is promoting three growth impetuses, including investment impetus, including domestic investment, foreign investment, private investment, and social investment.
Emphasizing the important role of public investment in leading, activating all social resources for development investment, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said, in 2024, the country will allocate VND 657 trillion for public investment, mainly for investment in transport infrastructure and strive to achieve a disbursement rate of at least 95%.
Together with the effective promotion of growth impetuses, the concentration of public investment disbursement, with the operation of transport projects, will contribute to reducing logistics costs for businesses, reducing input costs, and increasing the competitiveness of products, businesses, and the economy; creating new development opportunities because wherever roads lead, new development spaces are opened up, especially in industrial development, urban areas, and services.
“This affirms that the Party and State’s focus on implementing three strategic breakthroughs, especially breakthroughs in infrastructure, especially in transport infrastructure, is the right and insightful choice, a decisive factor for short-term and long-term development,” Prime Minister Chinh affirmed. Each transport project has its own mission, function, different tasks but collectively it is very important and a strategic breakthrough.
Prime Minister Chinh said that in recent years, investment and development of transport infrastructure have been promoted, creating a trend, a trend, “not only the central but also local authorities have done it”. The period of 2021-2022 is a period of initiation, preparation, and project approval, 2023 is a simultaneous implementation, and 2024 is identified as a year of acceleration to implement key transport projects.
He assessed that 2023 can be said to be a successful year in infrastructure development – one of the three strategic breakthroughs, Prime Minister praised the localities, ministries, sectors, investors, contractors, and consultants who have made many efforts, synchronized implementation, especially with the working spirit of “working through Tet, through holidays”, “overcoming the scorching sun, winning the rain”, “working 3 shifts, 4 teams”, “eating while taking advantage of the opportunity, sleeping hurriedly”, promoting the implementation of transport projects, the more they do, the more mature they are in terms of thinking, awareness, and action.
The Prime Minister also made it clear that some projects and plans are still delayed due to prolonged investment procedures; slow land clearance; not proactively securing materials due to regulatory obstacles; regimes, policies encourage units and individuals to make efforts to focus on promoting projects that have not been timely; the relevant subjects need to coordinate closely, more effectively…
The Prime Minister asked the participating delegates to discuss, assess the situation, propose solutions to shorten the progress of projects, ensure the quality, technical/artistic aspects of the projects, ensure labor safety, hygiene, environmental landscape. At the same time, solve difficulties related to ODA capital use, use marine sand in construction of transport projects…
Leaders of the Ministry of Transport speak at the Meeting – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
A successful year in implementing strategic breakthroughs in infrastructure
According to reports from the Ministry of Transport, in 2023, Prime Minister Chinh chaired 05 meetings of the Steering Committee and inspected on-site projects; directed and issued many instructions, documents to remove difficulties and obstacles, urge ministries, sectors, and localities to implement tasks.
In the early days of 2024, Prime Minister Chinh issued 02 telegrams directing agencies and units to continue to promote the highest sense of responsibility, accelerate the progress of implementing projects, transport infrastructure and focus on removing difficulties and obstacles related to the determination, construction unit price; material exploitation, supply in construction.
In the first days of the Lunar New Year, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha inspected and sent New Year’s greetings at 05 essential transport projects in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau provinces to timely direct and remove difficulties and encourage and encourage laborers.
Delegates attending the Meeting – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
With the deep and resolute direction of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Ministers, along with close coordination, responsibility, and efforts to implement tasks of ministries, sectors, and localities, many long-standing difficulties and obstacles at some projects have been resolved; the work of preparing investment in projects has been accelerated, many projects have been started in 2023; many projects have been completed and put into use, bringing about effective investment results.
Newly-implemented projects even meet or exceed the set plan; disbursement results of projects are at a high level or exceed requirements. Ministries including Planning and Investment, Natural Resources and Environment, Construction, and Finance have completed many tasks assigned by the Prime Minister.
Currently, the country has 34 major projects, 86 important national and focal transport projects in 46 provinces and centrally-run cities. These include 5 railway projects, 2 airport projects, and the rest are road projects, mainly high-speed roads and ring roads in Hanoi, the belt road system in HCMC.
The East-West North-South high-speed railway project has completed 9/11 as planned in the 2017-2020 period and the My Thuan-Can Tho project, raising the total length of highways to 1,892 km, of which in 2023 alone is 475 km; 2 remaining projects will be invested in the form of BOT contracts, investors and contractors are actively implementing to complete as directed by the Prime Minister.
For the 12 projects in the 2021-2025 period, although the first year of implementation still faces difficulties in terms of land and construction materials, investors and contractors have made efforts to organize construction and adhere to the set schedule.
For the 5 high-speed East-West road and ring road projects, the progress of implementation is still slow, except for some packages carried out by Ho Chi Minh City and Long An (the belt road 3), Hanoi (the belt road 4), Ba Ria-Vung Tau (Bien Hoa – Vung Tau highway), Dak Lak and Khanh Hoa (Khanh Hoa – Buon Ma Thuot) being the managing agencies implementing the basic plan satisfactorily.
Other high-speed projects such as Tuyen Quang – Ha Giang section through Ha Giang province; Cao Lanh – An Huu; Ben Luc – Long Thanh are being implemented by investors and contractors closely following the set schedule.
The suburban Nhon-ga Hanoi railway project and the Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien project are being reviewed by Hanoi and HCMC, removing contract obstacles, conducting training, completing procedures for fire prevention and fire fighting, accepting the work, and certifying the safety of the system to strive for running the Nhon-ga Hanoi section and Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien project in July 2024.
Regarding the Long Thanh international airport project, packages are organizing construction such as package 5.10 Passenger Terminal, construction package of works serving flight management have been directed by Vietnam Airports Corporation (ACV), Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation (VATM) instructing contractors to actively implement according to the schedule. Packages that have not yet started are included in the component project 1 of building headquarters of state management agencies, component project 4 of constructing essential works being implemented by the managing agencies, investment procedures are being carried out; selecting investors. Terminal 3 of Tan Son Nhat International Airport Passenger Terminal project by ACV implementing construction, closely following the set schedule, disbursement has reached VND 2,477 billion out of VND 10,825 billion (23%)…
The Electronic Information Portal will continue to update information about the Meeting./.
