Ministry wants advance payment to transfer military land for Tan Son Nhat airport

It a document sent to the city administration, the ministry said it will hand over more military land to the city after its Air and Air Defense Force receives the advance.

In July, the central government had approved a plan for Ho Chi Minh City to receive 27.85 hectares of military land to serve construction of the Tan Son Nhat International Airport's third terminal (T3).

PM Pham Minh Chinh had said then that construction should be "completed by September 2024 at the latest."

HCMC is in charge of acquiring the land and transferring it to the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), investor of the T3 project.

Per a government resolution, the defense ministry will hand over 16.05 hectares of land in Tan Binh District to facilitate construction of the new terminal, and 11.8 hectares to build a connection road.

The ministry said in mid-October that it would hand over 16.05 hectares of land to HCMC the same month - 14.7 hectares immediately and the rest by the month-end.

The cost of the land is estimated at VND1.152 trillion ($48.2 million).

However, no transfer has been made, prompting Chinh to order earlier this month that the ministry and HCMC authorities cooperate to ensure that the ACV receives the military land within the month.

T3, designed as a domestic terminal, will have an annual capacity of 20 million passengers, easing the huge load on existing facilities.

The work is expected to cost VND10.99 trillion.

Tan Son Nhat is the largest and busiest airport in Vietnam, with one terminal each for domestic and international flights.

The airport has been overloaded for years, and the result is visible cracks and deformation as well as subsidence of runways and taxiways.

It has been serving 36 million passengers a year since 2017 against a designed capacity of 25 million a year by 2020.