Investors pouring money into transport infrastructure
By developing transport infrastructure projects under the mode of BT (build, transfer), investors are willing to pour capital into projects if there are reasonable policies.
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There are 37 traffic congestion points in the city, from the central area to Tan Son Nhat Airport area and Cat Lai Port.
A report from the HCM City Transport Department says the city will need VND553.879 trillion for 203 transport infrastructure projects. But the city’s budget can meet only 31.8% of the capital demand.
The decision of HCM City authorities to invite more than 100 businesses to attend a meeting on urban development and a call for private investment in transport infrastructure are expected to help settle the problems.
In Hanoi, at a conference to call for investment held days ago, the city’s Mayor Nguyen Duc Chung introduced a list of projects, including 17 PPP (private public partnership) projects, capitalized at VND802.700 trillion in total. Of these, there are 11 projects in urban infrastructure.
At the conference, Vingroup, a large real estate developer, signed an MOU (memorandum of understanding) on investing VND100 trillion, or US$5 billion, to develop a railway.
“This is the new life of the company,” a manager of CII, an infrastructure developer based in HCM City, said in local newspapers when talking about the opportunities to invest in transport infrastructure under the BT mode.
CII is known in Vietnam as a pioneer in seeking capital in the stock market to invest in infrastructure development. It has been listed among the top 50 listed companies in 2017 released by Forbes with VND1.211 trillion worth of revenue and VND838 billion in post-tax profit in 2016.
CII is now implementing BT projects in Thu Thiem urban area in HCM City. In exchange, the state has agreed to allocate 10 hectares of land in the area to the company for real estate project development.
CII can obtain the land plots in advantageous positions without having to attend bids and follow complicated procedures.
The ‘exchanging land for infrastructure works’ policy is not new and will still be applied in HCM City to upgrade the poor infrastructure.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that emerging economies in Asia, including in Vietnam, will need US$26 trillion from now to 2030 to develop infrastructure.
The figure is similar to recent estimates by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) that Vietnam needs US$480 billion more for infrastructure projects, including 11 power plants with total capacity of 13,200 MW and 1,380 kilometers of highway.
