Accordingly, the Ministry of Transport agrees with the opinion of the State Capital Management Committee at Enterprises that the Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) is capable of being the investor and managing and operating the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh expressway.

The Ministry of Transport believes that, compared to public investment and investment under the PPP method, VEC being assigned to carry out project investment will have many advantages.

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The Ministry of Transport agrees with the opinion of the State Capital Management Committee at Enterprises that VEC Corporation is capable of being the investor and managing and operating the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh expressway.

Firstly, promoting the role and resources of state-owned enterprises, in line with the goal of forming VEC, synchronizing the operation and exploitation of expressways, is a premise for VEC to invest in expanding expressways managed by VEC.

Second, it is consistent with the ownership situation of this route's assets of VEC in the coming time (currently carrying out procedures to transfer this asset to VEC through the form of charter capital increase).

Third, no need to use public investment capital, reducing pressure on the state budget.

Fourth, the execution time is shorter.

Fifth, with the option of assigning VEC to implement, there will be no need to deal with conflicts of interest between VEC and the new entity (in the case of investment under the PPP method).

"Using capital from state-owned enterprises such as VEC for investment is one of three forms of investment in transport infrastructure today, similar to the investment in airport infrastructure by Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation and Vietnam Airports Corporation," the report stated.

According to the proposed plan, the project to expand the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh expressway section has a total length of nearly 22km.

In which, the section from Ho Chi Minh City Ring Road 2 intersection (Km 4+000) to Ho Chi Minh City Ring Road 3 intersection (Km 8+770) will be expanded to 8 lanes according to the plan.

The section from the Ho Chi Minh City Ring Road 3 intersection (Km 8+770) to the Bien Hoa - Vung Tau expressway intersection (Km 25+920) will be expanded to 10 lanes according to the plan.

The preliminary total investment of the project is about 14,955 billion VND (including interest during construction, excluding site clearance costs). Of which, equity is 5,555 billion VND (37%), commercial loan is 9,400 billion VND (63%).

VEC will mobilize 100% of capital to implement the project investment and organize exploitation and toll collection to recover capital. Central budget/local budget (HCMC, Dong Nai) will be used to carry out site clearance and separate into independent projects in the form of public investment.

If approved by competent authorities, the project will be prepared for investment from 2024 to 2025 and implemented from 2025 to 2027.