At the beginning of the year, billions were poured into many highways.

In 2025, about 20 expressway projects will be started nationwide. About 50 other expressway projects with investment capital of thousands of billions of VND are being rushed to complete and put into operation.

In early January 2025, the consortium of Vingroup and Techcombank completed a feasibility study report for the Gia Nghia - Chon Thanh expressway project, connecting Dak Nong and Binh Phuoc provinces. This project is expected to be 128.8 km long with a total investment of more than VND 25,500 billion. The parties will complete the documents and start construction at the end of the first quarter of 2025.

Similarly, in the first month of 2025, a series of key expressway projects in the Southern region were directed by the Ministry of Transport and localities to accelerate the construction progress.

Accordingly, the Ho Chi Minh City - Moc Bai expressway project (51 km long, total investment of nearly 20,000 billion VND) has just been announced by the Management Board of Investment and Construction of Traffic Works of Ho Chi Minh City to complete the environmental impact assessment report and can be implemented in the first quarter of 2025 with a budget of nearly 9,700 billion VND. Other projects, such as: Dau Giay - Tan Phu expressway project (60 km, investment capital of nearly 9,000 billion VND); My An - Cao Lanh expressway project (27 km, more than 6,100 billion VND); Ho Chi Minh City expressway expansion project. Ho Chi Minh - Trung Luong - My Thuan (91.8 km, investment capital of nearly 38,700 billion VND)... are also directed to be implemented immediately in the first quarter to contribute to achieving the goal of completing 3,000 km of highways nationwide by the end of this year and increasing the total scale of road highways to 5,000 km by 2030.

Nearly 50 highway projects are being invested in and are committed to being completed in 2025.

A quick observation in Ho Chi Minh City and the southern provinces shows that the urgent completion of unfinished expressway projects is being strongly promoted by localities. Inter-regional expressways, such as: Ring Road 3 - Ho Chi Minh City; Bien Hoa - Vung Tau; Ben Luc - Long Thanh; Can Tho - Hau Giang - Ca Mau; Cao Lanh - Lo Te; Cao Lanh - An Huu... and a series of component projects of the "mega-project" of the North-South expressway (such as: Ho Chi Minh Road Rach Soi - Ben Nhat, Go Quao - Vinh Thuan; Rach Mieu 2 Bridge...) are all committed to completion in 2025.

According to many experts, currently, investment in completing transport infrastructure, especially the development of highway systems and airports, is the sector that is receiving the most budget capital and has had a rapid growth rate in the past 3-5 years. This sector is currently attracting strong investment capital from society, especially credit capital sponsored by the commercial banking system and investment capital in the form of BOT, PPP from large domestic economic groups.

The Government's setting of major goals such as building and completing 5,000 km of highways by 2030, and basically completing main routes connecting North-South and inter-regional traffic, shows Vietnam's great determination in improving and upgrading infrastructure, promoting socio-economic development and increasing investment attraction efficiency.

However, for localities and enterprises investing in transport infrastructure projects, concentrating resources to implement many large expressway projects at the same time is also a big challenge. These include risks related to project finance, such as: increasing total investment costs; over-reliance on credit loans; severe shortage of filling materials, etc.

For example, according to calculations by the Ministry of Transport, currently, when building new inter-provincial and inter-regional highways in the Ho Chi Minh City - Mekong Delta region, investors are facing a shortage of hundreds of millions of cubic meters of sand and gravel to level the roadbed. The need to increase the stages of handling subsidence and landslides and invest in overpasses has caused the investment cost of highway construction in the Mekong Delta to increase by 1.3 to 1.6 times compared to other localities. Not to mention that each year, thousands of billions of VND will be spent on maintenance, upgrading and handling landslides, which are at risk of subsidence and cracking.

From an investment perspective, although the budget (both central and local) currently gives considerable priority to the infrastructure sector, as shown by the positive growth in public investment disbursement in the past two years, in the period 2025-2030, the capital demand for investment in highways, railways and airports is expected to be in the millions of billions of VND.

In addition to budget resources, according to experts, attracting private investment in the infrastructure sector is a mandatory direction to complete the expected goals. In particular, the Law on Investment under the form of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) needs to be further amended and supplemented to ensure fairness for the private sector when participating in key transport infrastructure projects. Particularly in terms of credit, some experts recommend that Vietnam should be more open in increasing interbank syndicated loans for transport infrastructure projects or establishing an investment fund to remove bottlenecks in capital arrangement. In addition, for projects in economically disadvantaged areas, it is possible to consider raising the level of budget participation to over 50% and commit to timely disbursement to avoid local capital shortages, project price increases, causing losses to investors and commercial banks participating in capital financing.

Source: https://thoibaonganhang.vn/dau-nam-tien-ty-do-vao-nhieu-cao-toc-159782.html