Government urges haste on land acquisition for transnational expressway

It wants several related projects to get going this year. By the second quarter of the year, the Ministry of Transport should install milestones for the areas that are to be acquired for the projects, Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung has directed.

The ministry should publicly announce these areas to ensure transparency and work with local authorities to acquire the land quickly, he said.

Dung has asked the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Industry and Trade to move telecommunications and electricity constructions in areas that have to be acquired.

He has also tasked leaders of cities and provinces to inform local residents of the importance of the North-South Expressway and give them information about compensation and relocation. The legal rights of local residents need to be guaranteed, he stressed

According to the government, the existing North-South route transports 45.37 million passengers and 62.27 million tons of cargo next year. By next year, demand will exceed capacity of the existing route by 5.92 million passengers and 14.5 million tons of cargo a year.

However, the North-South Expressway involves a series of major construction projects with large budgets and advanced technologies, and cannot be finished before 2025, the government has said.

The government has specified eleven 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 public-private partnerships (PPPs).

Work on two of the three public-funded sections is likely to begin in the second quarter of this year. For the private-funded works, the transport ministry will begin the bidding process in October.

The 11 sections are expected to cost VND118 trillion ($5.06 billion), with VND55 trillion ($2.36 billion) to be provided by the central government.

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