Use public investment capital to continue project implementation
The project "Upgrading and expanding National Highway 9 from Cua Viet Port to National Highway 1" uses surplus capital from the VRAMP Project, a WB loan approved for investment in August 2021. The project is 13.8km long, a level II delta road with 4 lanes, with a total investment of more than 440 billion VND. In which, the Ministry of Transport is responsible for implementing the construction investment and the People's Committee of Quang Tri province completes compensation and site clearance work, ensuring the project's construction progress in 2021-2022. However, due to slow site clearance, the project implementation period has not been completed yet, so the project had to stop construction and the capital was cut.
In November 2024, Party Central Committee member, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister Bui Thanh Son directed and assigned the Ministry of Transport to close the WB loan project and take responsibility for managing and developing a plan to continue investing and completing the unfinished items of the above project.
Mr. Le Duc Tien - Vice Chairman of Quang Tri Provincial People's Committee said that the Ministry of Transport is currently completing the procedures to close the project, then will continue to invest in upgrading and expanding National Highway 9. On the side of Quang Tri province, after receiving instructions from the Deputy Prime Minister, Quang Tri province has assigned the Department of Transport of Quang Tri province to be the focal agency, coordinating with the Provincial Investment and Construction Project Management Board and related departments and branches - working with the Ministry of Transport and the Vietnam Road Administration, to complete the procedures, continue to deploy investment and construction to complete the project in the medium-term public investment plan for the period 2026-2030. At the same time, Quang Tri Provincial People's Committee also assigned the People's Committees of Cam Lo, Gio Linh districts and Dong Ha city to be responsible for resolving the consequences arising from the project's site clearance work. And clarify the causes and responsibilities of organizations and individuals in not completing the site clearance work according to the project's schedule.
Whose responsibility is it?
Research shows that the project "Upgrading and expanding National Highway 9 from Cua Viet Port to National Highway 1" has a very large volume of land acquisition and clearance work. The area of land acquisition and clearance is about 452,205m² with 2,133 plots of land, 807 cases are affected, of which 19,000m² of architectural works, 66 houses are affected, 17 households have to resettle. The measurement, counting, owner planning for compensation, and construction of resettlement areas according to the correct procedures take a lot of time.
For example, from the time of land reclamation notification to the decision on land reclamation, the latest is 90 days for agricultural land, 180 days for non-agricultural land; the time for surveying and adjusting cadastral maps to serve land reclamation and land allocation is 120 days. Thus, the time for implementing land clearance work from the time of implementation to the decision on land reclamation is about 310 days (10 months), while the project implementation time is only 1 year.
According to the leader of the People's Committee of Quang Tri province, in addition to many objective and subjective reasons, Quang Tri province has not anticipated the sudden change in real estate prices in the area at the time of estimating the total investment compared to the time of project implementation, as well as the complicated site clearance process of the sponsor, leading to commitments on progress that cannot be fulfilled.
