Recorded at the beginning of March 2026, the planned construction area of Sa Pa Airport in Bao Ha commune, Lao Cai province has only formed a resettlement area, and the main items of the airport have not yet been started.
Through research, the Sa Pa Airport project was approved for investment policy by the Prime Minister in 2021, with a total capital of nearly 7,000 billion VND in PPP form, of which state capital accounts for more than 49%. The scale of use is about 371ha of land.
On March 3, 2022, Lao Cai Provincial People's Committee held the groundbreaking ceremony of Sa Pa airport with the expectation of becoming a bright spot connecting traffic in the Northwest region with all regions of the country.
The project is divided into two phases. Phase 1 builds an airport meeting 4C standards and a grade II military airport, with a capacity of 1.5 million passengers per year. Phase 2 completes the items to increase the capacity to 3 million passengers/year.
The project implementation period is 50 years, including 4 years of construction and 46 years of exploitation and capital recovery. However, the biggest bottleneck still lies in the investor selection stage.
Mr. Nguyen Van Tan (resident of Bao Ha commune) said wearily: "Our people have heard about this Sa Pa airport project for many years. But for many years, after people agreed to hand over houses and land to serve construction, there has been no movement so far.
According to Mr. Tan, the smooth site clearance has shown the support of people in the commune. Therefore, people hope that the project needs to be accelerated in progress and the process of finding investors to create stability for economic development.
Similarly, Ms. Bui Thi Diu (resident of Bao Ha commune) expressed: "People strongly support the airport construction project, which is reflected in the extremely favorable site clearance. When put into operation, the project helps attract tourists and investors to develop tourism and economy for the locality. However, many years have passed, the project is still only at the groundbreaking stage, so I don't know if the project can continue to be implemented or will be abandoned.
According to information from the Lao Cai Provincial Traffic Construction Investment Project Management Board, at the end of 2021, the province announced a survey of investor interest. At that time, two businesses expressed interest: Fansipan Sa Pa Cable Car Tourism Service Co., Ltd. (under Sun Group) and T&T Group Joint Stock Company.
In May 2022, the bidding documents for Component Project 2 were approved and issued. Although the bid closing time was extended, no investors submitted documents. The second bidding invitation at the end of 2022 also fell into a similar situation, even after further extension.
Thus, after 2 bidding invitations and 2 extensions, finding investors is still difficult.
Mr. Nguyen Thanh Cong - Vice Chairman of Bao Ha Commune People's Committee - said that the locality is implementing site clearance phase 2 and arranging resettlement for affected households. As for the construction deployment time, the commune does not know because it is under the provincial authority.
Leaders of the Lao Cai Provincial Traffic Construction Investment Project Management Board further informed that site clearance work is still being maintained in parallel with the coordination of ministries and sectors to find investors.
In 2025, the project still cannot start because the investor has not been selected. Hopefully, in 2026, there will be a unit with sufficient capacity and determination to implement the project," this person said.
