Metro Line 2 includes 8 main construction packages, of which CP1 package (construction of buildings and auxiliary works at Tham Luong depot) has been completed. However, the remaining 7 packages are facing difficulties as they are waiting for the consulting unit to complete the bidding documents and organize the bidding.
To implement Metro Line 2, since 2012, the Management Board of Ho Chi Minh City Urban Railways (MAUR) has signed a contract with the IC consulting consortium, headed by a company from Germany. The contract is worth nearly 44 million Euros. However, due to the project's length, MAUR has signed 12 additional contract appendices to resolve arising issues.
By 2019, when discussing Annex 13, which involved updating work, completing documents and completing procedures with donor loans, the two sides could not reach an agreement. The main reason was that the consultant requested additional costs of up to nearly 3.7 million Euros, a figure that caused the negotiations to fall into a deadlock.
In 2022, IC Consulting announced the termination of the contract after the two parties failed to reach an agreement on signing contract appendix No. 13.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has directed the dispute to be resolved through commercial mediation. Currently, MAUR and IC consultants are discussing to complete procedures related to payment, settlement, contract liquidation, and handling of consultants' complaints through commercial mediation.
At the same time, MAUR issued a tender document to search for a new consulting unit (CS2B consultant).
The CS2B consulting package is a consulting package for project implementation control and construction supervision. This is a foreign consulting package, the main consultant for the project, with an estimated value of 55.26 million Euros (equivalent to 63 million USD), implemented from 2025 until the project is completed in 2032. This package uses ODA loans, additional loans from the German Reconstruction Bank (KfW) within the approved project investment level.
When mobilized, CS2B consultants will update the design, update bidding documents, and organize contractor selection for the project's main packages.
According to MAUR, the main and biggest difficulty currently facing the Metro Line 2 project is that the procedures for arranging ODA loans from donors ADB, KfW, EIB are complicated, lengthy and have not yet been completed. This has directly impacted the progress of the bidding for the CS2B consulting package and the main construction and equipment packages of the project.
To achieve the goal of completing the construction of Metro Line 2 by 2030, construction work must be implemented in 2025. Accordingly, updating bidding documents and organizing the selection of contractors for the main packages of the project must be completed in 2025, which means that CS2B consultants must be mobilized as soon as possible.
Recently, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has issued instructions and organized meetings with relevant agencies and units to promote the resolution of difficulties related to capital arrangement for Metro Line 2 project.
Metro Line 2 has a total investment of nearly 47,900 billion VND, is more than 11 km long with 9 underground stations and one elevated station. This metro line is expected to solve the travel needs of people from the city center to the Northwest and vice versa.
