Why does the Government set a target of 'basically completing' high-speed railway by 2035?
Báo Thanh niên•27/11/2024
The government aims to 'basically complete' the North-South high-speed railway project by 2035 because this project is exceptionally large and unprecedented, so there will be unforeseen difficulties that will affect progress.
Delegates want high-speed railway to extend from Lang Son to Ca Mau Cape
According to the draft Resolution on the North-South high-speed railway project, the Government plans to implement the project from 2025, striving to basically complete it by 2035.
The government believes that the North-South high-speed railway project is particularly large and unprecedented, so there will be unforeseen difficulties that will affect progress.
PHOTO: MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT
Commenting on the content, the examining agency requested the Government to clarify the cause and propose solutions to ensure that there is no situation of prolonging the implementation time and increasing the total investment similar to the projects in the past. According to the Government, projects in the railway sector, especially urban railways in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are behind schedule and increasing the total investment due to many reasons. Specifically, such as slow and complicated site clearance; disputes between investors and contractors due to loose contracts. In addition, this is the first time the project is implemented in Vietnam, the understanding of the investment decision-making level, investors, consultants, etc. in the country is still confused. The domestic railway industry is developing, the localization rate of mechanical products is not high, causing the price of input products to increase... Learning from experience, the Government has directed research and proposed a number of solutions in the pre-feasibility study report, such as implementing site clearance from 2026, implementing the construction of resettlement areas serving the project in advance. During the implementation process, the Ministry of Transport hired foreign legal consultants, project management consultants, and supervision consultants in combination with domestic consultants to implement; applied specific policies on mineral exploitation as common construction materials... Notably, according to current legal regulations, there is no concept of "basically completed". Therefore, the appraisal agency proposed that the Government clearly define the time to complete the project and put it into operation and exploitation so that the National Assembly has a basis for supervision according to regulations. Explaining this content, the Government said that due to the special nature of railway operations, after completing the project, it is necessary to continue to carry out tasks such as trial operation (single-movement, inter-movement), and system safety assessment before putting into commercial operation. Determining the exact time of operation at the present time is only tentative. In addition, this is an exceptionally large project, unprecedented in scale and technical complexity, integrating many specialties, implemented for the first time in the country, with no experience, limited human resources, and the implementation process will encounter "unforeseen" difficulties and obstacles, affecting the project completion progress. Therefore, the Government has proposed to start the project in 2027, striving to basically complete the entire route by 2035. In the next step, it will continue to specifically determine progress milestones as a basis for the National Assembly to supervise. The Government also said that the National Assembly has allowed the basic completion time of some important national projects, such as the North-South expressway in the East phase 2021-2025, Ring Road 4 - Hanoi Capital Region...
Adjust some specific mechanisms
In the draft resolution of the National Assembly, the Government still retains 19 specific mechanisms for the National Assembly to consider and approve, but adjusts some contents accordingly. Accordingly, for the selection of contractors for EPC packages (design, procurement, construction), consulting packages using foreign contractors, the appraisal team outside the composition as prescribed by the law on bidding must have the participation of representatives of the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Finance, the Government Inspectorate, and the State Audit. The investor is responsible for sending the total investment dossier prepared by the consultant to the State Audit to conduct an audit at the same time as the project appraisal process of the competent authority. The State Audit is responsible for sending representatives to participate in the appraisal process of investment projects at the request of the project appraisal agency. Explaining the adjustment of this content, the Government said that this is a large, especially important project, with complex technical technology, a very large total investment, a long project implementation time, with many particularly large, technically and technologically complex bid packages. Therefore, the approval of the budget needs to be reviewed from the beginning by relevant agencies to enhance transparency and limit problems in the implementation process.
The total preliminary investment of the project is 1.71 million billion VND. The capital from the state budget is arranged in the medium-term public investment plans. The implementation progress is from 2025, striving to basically complete by 2035.
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