One of the main reasons for the delay in disbursement is that the project has difficulties with legal procedures, under the authority of central agencies.
The project was allocated VND6,800 billion in capital this year. By the end of October, the possibility of disbursing this capital is impossible. Therefore, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has reported and proposed the City People's Council to adjust the medium-term and 2024 capital of the project to other projects.
Over the years, Ho Chi Minh City has tried very hard to resolve legal problems for this mega project, but to no avail. The headache is that the project has completed more than 90% of the construction volume, but due to legal problems, construction has had to be suspended since November 2020.
Every year that passes is a huge waste.
The first waste is a 10,000 billion VND super project that is 90% completed but not yet operational, exposed to the sky and earth, each day that passes is a pile of money lying "dead". Not to mention the degraded construction items, when continuing construction, money must be spent to repair and replace.
The second waste is that the project has been stalled, the goal of flood control for 570km², serving about 6.5 million people in the central areas and along the Saigon River has not been achieved. Every rainy season, floods attack the city, causing much damage to the people.
Furthermore, the construction items were stopped and could not be operated, causing obstruction to waterway traffic and affecting the movement of ships and boats.
According to HCMC’s plan, after the problems are resolved, the capital will be re-allocated for the super tidal barrier project. But no one is sure when the problems will be resolved.
In the medium-term plan for the period 2021 - 2025, Ho Chi Minh City has allocated nearly 8,883 billion VND for this project. However, due to the inability to disburse all of it, this capital has been transferred to the period 2026 - 2030. The worrying thing is that if the legal procedures are not cleared, the project will continue to be suspended, and it is difficult for anyone to commit to completing the remaining 10% of the project by 2030.
If there is no drastic, breakthrough solution to stop this flood prevention project from being "stuck" in legal procedures, will Ho Chi Minh City be flooded for a long time?
