Road to transport breakthroughs

February 06, 2012 | 16:56
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Big ODA projects are expected to entail breakthroughs to the transport sector’s capital disbursement in 2012.

Tran Xuan Sanh, chairman of Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) - Vietnam’s largest state highway developer - said in 2012 VEC sought to disburse VND13 trillion ($619 million) worth in investment capital, triple that in 2011.

Accordingly, besides VND2 trillion ($952 million) coming from northern Cau Gie-Ninh Binh expressway which sourced government bond capital and would come online in mid 2012, the remaining capital will come from three projects using official development assistance (ODA) and ordinary capital resources (OCR) capital.

They are the Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay expressway, the Hanoi-Lao Cai and southern Ben Luc-Long Thanh expressways.

The 263 kilometre Noi Bai-Lao Cai expressway is able to make the target of disbursing over VND6 trillion ($285.7 million) come true in 2012 with eight international contractors from South Korea and China reportedly in full swing to quicken the project’s pace.

South Korea-based Posco, developer of A1 bidding package involving building four kilometres in the expressway’s beginning section, recently poured 1,000 cubic metres of concrete into building a tunnel when the expressway crosses National Highway 2 in Hanoi’s Soc Son district.

At over 61km long Hanoi-Thai Nguyen expressway using Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) loan, in early days of Lunar New Year a developer (Directorate for Roads of Vietnam) representative said the developer had considered replacing 10 underperformed sub-contractors to bolster the project progress.

According to Ministry of Transport’s (MoT) Planning and Investment Department general director Nguyen Hoang, in 2012 ODA projects worth $11 billion in  total investment capital with the MoT acting as developer would represent a breakthrough in respect to capital disbursement.

Reality shows ODA projects are benefiting from a number of MoT development incentives. Accordingly, from January 2012 ODA project contractors will get in advance 10 per cent of the contract value and payment of 80 per cent of materials at construction site.  

“Accelerating the project pace is the only option to contractors to maximise profits and reduce losses since the prices of most fuel and materials are escalating,” said Le Ngoc Hoa, director at Civil Engineering Construction Corporation 4, developer of tender package 1 under JICA-funded Hanoi’s beltway project 3.

By Anh Minh

vir.com.vn

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