40 firms evince investment interest in North-South Expressway

The Ministry of Transport said the interested investors comprise 26 domestic and 14 foreign firms from South Korea, France, the U.K., Hong Kong and mainland China. Together they have acquired 120 bidding documents for eight public-private partnership (PPP) sections of the expressway.

Nguyen Viet Huy, deputy head of the PPP department under the transport ministry, said that deadline for securing bidding documents is July 10, after which the ministry will start the bidding process for the eight PPP components. 

The ministry will select suitable investors based on three criteria: financial capability, which accounts for 60 percent of overall score, experience (30 percent) and methods (10 percent).

Huy said that the government will cover land acquisition costs, and tolls will be set according to a specific frame and remain unchanged for years.

Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung last month directed agencies to quickly identify and clear land needed for the transnational expressway project.

The government has specified 11 components of the North-South Expressway among its top priorities this year. Three of them are publicly funded and the rest will be built under PPPs.

Work on two of the three public-funded sections is likely to begin in the second quarter of this year, while work on the eight PPP sections could begin next April, the ministry had said earlier. 

The 11 sections are expected to cost VND118 trillion ($5.06 billion), with VND55 trillion ($2.36 billion) sourced from the state budget.

Together, the projects will cover 654 kilometers of the 2,000-kilometer expressway, starting from northern Nam Dinh Province to Vinh Long Province to the southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.