Will Infrastructure Development Take a Leap Forward in the Year of the Dragon?
Opening the meeting, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said the country is promoting 3 growth drivers, including investment, which includes domestic investment, foreign investment, private investment, and social investment.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chairs the meeting of the State Steering Committee for key national projects and the focussed national projects of the transport industry. Photo: VGP
Public investment plays an important role in leading and activating all social resources for development investment. In 2024, the country will allocate 657,000 trillion dong for public investment, mainly in transportation infrastructure.
Along with driving growth momentum, concentrated disbursement of public investment, with transportation projects put into operation, will contribute to reducing logistics costs for businesses, reducing input costs, and increasing the competitiveness of products; creating new development space because wherever there are roads, new development spaces will be opened up, especially for industrial development, urban areas, services, etc.
“This affirms the Party and State’s determination to focus on implementing 3 strategic breakthroughs, especially the breakthrough in infrastructure, especially transportation infrastructure, is the right and wise choice, a decisive factor for immediate and long-term development,”, Prime Minister Chinh affirmed.
The Prime Minister also assessed that 2023 can be said to be a successful year in terms of infrastructure development – one of the 3 strategic breakthroughs.
Disbursement of public investment capital in January 2024 reached 2.58%, equivalent to 16,900 trillion dong, higher than both the relative and absolute figures compared to the same period last year.
According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the above-mentioned results were achieved thanks to the closely directed process of the Government, the Prime Minister, clearly identifying difficulties in each industry, field, and stage of public investment projects.
At the meeting, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh shared that on the 3rd and 4th days of Tet (12th – 13th February 2024), the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha inspected the Tet implementation and visited workers at 5 key projects.
At the construction sites, the Prime Minister was deeply moved when he saw thousands of workers, engineers still working through Tet, putting aside the reunion with their families in the first days of the new year to work for the development of the country, to complete transportation projects.
Especially at the Long Thanh International Airport project, there have been significant changes compared to previous inspections. Despite the Tet holiday, the construction site is bustling with construction activities, with machines and workers working on multiple items. Investors, contractors, officials, engineers, workers and laborers have made great efforts with the determination to “overcome the sun, win over the rain”, “seize the opportunity, sleep diligently”, working in “3 shifts 4 teams”, “through holidays and Tet”, to accelerate construction progress.
In addition, the Prime Minister also pointed out that some projects still have slow progress due to lengthy investment procedures; slow land clearance; lack of proactively procuring materials due to regulatory obstacles; encouraging units and individuals to make concentrated efforts to promote projects that are not timely; relevant entities need to coordinate closely and more effectively….
Progress of Major Transportation Projects
According to a report from the Ministry of Transport, there are currently 34 major projects, 86 important national component projects, industry-focused projects in 46 provinces and centrally-run cities nationwide. Among them are 5 railway projects, 2 airport projects, and the remaining projects are road projects, mainly highways and ring roads in the Hanoi Capital Region, and the Ho Chi Minh City’s ring road.
Among them, the eastern North-South expressway project has completed 9/11 component projects of the 2017-2020 phase and the My Thuan-Can Tho project as planned, raising the total length of expressways to 1,892 km, of which only 2023 has 475 km; the remaining 2 projects are invested under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, the investors and contractors are actively implementing to complete as directed by the Prime Minister.
The North-South expressway will be the backbone of the national transportation network, thanks to its diverse accessibility. Photo: VOV
For 12 component projects of the 2021-2025 phase, although there were many problems in the first year of implementation in terms of land and construction materials, investors and contractors made efforts to organize construction and closely follow the set schedule.
In regard to the 5 East-West expressway projects and ring roads, the progress of implementation is still slow, except for some packages in Ho Chi Minh City and Long An (Ring Road 3), Hanoi (Ring Road 4), Ba Ria – Vung Tau (Bien Hoa – Vung Tau highway), Dak Lak and Khanh Hoa (Khanh Hoa – Buon Ma Thuot) as the governing authorities carried out the basic deployment to meet the plan.
Other expressway projects such as Tuyen Quang – Ha Giang section through Ha Giang province; Cao Lanh – An Huu; Ben Luc – Long Thanh are being implemented closely following the set schedule by the investors and contractors.
Urban railway project Nhon – Hanoi station and Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien project are being reviewed by Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to remove the obstacles in the contract, complete personnel training, complete fire and rescue procedures, inspect the construction work, and certify system safety to strive for the operation of the Nhon – Hanoi section and Ben Thanh – Suoi Tien project in July 2024.
The Nhon – Hanoi section strives to be put into operation in July 2024.
In the Long Thanh International Airport project, the packages are organizing construction such as Package 5.10 Passenger Terminal, package of construction works serving flight management, which are being actively implemented closely following the set schedule by Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation (VATM) directing contractors.
The packages that have not been started within the first component project to build the headquarters of state management agencies, component project 4 to build essential works are being implemented by the governing agencies in terms of investment procedures; selecting investors.
Package T3 Passenger Terminal Tan Son Nhat International Airport project is being implemented by ACV with construction closely following the set schedule, by now disbursement has reached 2,477/10,825 billion dong (23%)…
