Vietnam moves to fast-track site clearance for Long Thanh International Airport

September 15, 2021 | 09:26

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The Vietnamese government on September 14 asked relevant ministries, agencies, and localities to quicken the site clearance of Long Thanh International Airport to ensure the construction schedule of the first phase.

Vietnam moves to fast-track site clearance for Long Thanh International Airport

The passenger terminal of Long Thanh International Airport

The Government Office on September 14 issued Document No.6426/VPCP-CN on the direction of Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh, asking the southern province of Dong Nai, where the airport is located, to accelerate compensation, support, and resettlement; deal with the problems facing the component projects; and develop out-of-boundary infrastructure to ensure the process of capital disbursement and construction.

According to Dong Nai, to serve the construction, the province has to clear an area of 5,000 hectares of land, including 2,532ha for the first stage. The province has handed over 1,284ha to Southern Airport Authority, or nearly 51 per cent of the total area for the first phase.

In spite of this, the Ministry of Transport said the site clearance remains sluggish.

Long Thanh People’s Committee explained that the sluggishness in site clearance is mainly due to barriers to the performance of the policy on compensation, and support transfer of land use rights via written papers, and others. To fast-track the process, Dong Nai People’s Committee has directed Long Thanh People’s Committee to deal with this problem.

Worse still, COVID-19 is also slowing down the site clearance process.

The $16 billion Long Thanh International Airport was kicked off this January, with the first phase including one runway with a length of 4km, taxiways, an apron, and a passenger terminal with other auxiliary works to serve 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo each year.

As planned, the pilot operation of the first phase is expected to start in the second quarter of 2025 and commercial operations would start in Q4 of the same year.