Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway is a national key project with a length of 57.8 km, passing through Long An - Ho Chi Minh City - Dong Nai. Construction of the project started in 2014, completed in 2019, but due to financial difficulties, many categories are still unconstructed.
Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway is a national key project with a length of 57.8 km, passing through Long An - Ho Chi Minh City - Dong Nai. Construction of the project started in 2014, completed in 2019, but due to financial difficulties, many categories are still unconstructed.
At the Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway passing through Dong Nai Province in mid-October 2022, there was no sign of people at the construction site, while many categories were unfinished and covered by overgrown grass. The section through Long Tho Commune in Nhon Trach District, with a length of more than 3km in construction package A6, located next to the Phuoc An Port planning area, was only built nearly 1km but has had to stop construction from June 2019.
Nguyen Van Tuan, a security guard at the construction site since 2018, living in a small hut under the Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway, said that since the project was started, there have been three construction contractors, but after only a short time they withdrew, leaving unfinished construction categories. He had not received his salary for four months.
The latest data from the Vietnam Expressway Development Corporation (VEC), the project investor, shows that, up to now, the output value of the implemented bidding packages has reached VND10.97 trillion, equivalent to 79.96 percent of the construction value of the project under the original contract.
The Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway Project uses three sources of capital, including a loan of more than VND13.6 trillion from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), nearly VND12 trillion from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and reciprocal capital of more than VND5.69 trillion. Due to problems with legal procedures on capital, the construction packages using capital from the ADB have been suspended. Besides some construction packages that have been basically completed, the remaining packages have not been able to restart because the contractors requested to terminate the contracts.
Mr. Pham Hong Quang, General Director of VEC, said that according to Decision No.1131 dated July 22, 2020, of the Prime Minister approving the adjustment of the investment policy on the construction of Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway, the completion time of the project to put it into use is before December 31, 2023. However, due to problems with JICA's loan, reciprocal capital, procedures for approving the policy of using residual capital, and time arising in the process of selecting a new contractor for packages J1 and J3, the investor has stopped construction.
VEC proposed the Prime Minister approve the policy of extending the project completion time to September 30, 2025, and while waiting for the settlement of procedures for capital sources, VEC consulted the central agencies for permission to balance and use its own capital to restart construction and disburse for the project.
Recently, during a visit to the project, National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue said that over the past time, the National Assembly, the National Assembly Standing Committee, and the Government had focused on removing difficulties, including the capital for the implementation of Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway project.
Currently, the National Assembly Standing Committee has approved the allocation plan for the medium-term public investment plan for the 2021-2025 period and approved the capital allocation for the medium-term public investment plan with foreign capital from the central budget to the Ministry of Transport to arrange for VEC to implement projects using ODA and concessional loans from foreign sponsors that have been allowed by the National Assembly to change from on-lending to allocation.
(Source:SGGP)
