HCMC - The Ministry of Transport has requested relevant agencies to weigh franchising toll collections on State-funded expressways, which would enable the Government to recover capital immediately to finance other traffic projects.

Though the Government has allocated up to VND300,000 billion to develop road traffic infrastructure in 2021-2025, huge resources from the private sector are still needed for completion of the approved projects. The execution of build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects, in reality, showed that investors were not concerned about the projects’ financial plan at the beginning stage. However, these projects had to face revenue shortages later on due to another state-budget projects making the traffic flows distributed. The Ministry of Transport is, therefore, seeking solutions to remove such hurdles by building policies to lure private capital for project investment, in the form of public-private partnership (PPP), including franchising toll collections on State-funded expressway projects. In the year to November, the Ministry of Transport had disbursed VND34,900 billion of public capital, achieving 63.4% of the plan. To meet the disbursement target, large component projects, such as the North-South Expressway for the period of 2017 – 2020, Mai Son – National Highway 45, Cam Lo – La Son, Vinh Hao – Phan Thiet and Phan Thiet – Dau Giay, must be completed on schedule. Some 12 components of the North-South Expressway Project between 2021-2025 have been urged to move quickly in preparation for execution at the end of this year.